State v. Thompson-Baker

Citations

• 231 Conn. App. 41

Syllabus

Convicted of assault of public safety personnel, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant claimed that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that, when he assaulted K, a judicial marshal, K was acting in the performance of his official duties. Held: The trial court reasonably concluded that the evidence and the reasonable inferences drawn therefrom demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that K was acting in the performance of his duties when the defendant assaulted him because K and another judicial marshal testified that they had accompa- nied the defendant from the courthouse, where he had been arraigned, to a hospital, that he guarded the defendant at the hospital, and that K informed the defendant and hospital staff that the defendant was not permitted to eat, and that he did so pursuant to a judicial directive prohibiting the con- sumption of food by inmates while at a hospital, which prompted the defen- dant to spit in K's right eye. The trial court reasonably could have found that K denied the defendant access to food because he had a good faith, albeit erroneous, belief that a judicial directive prohibited the consumption of food by inmates while at a hospital, and this court declined to conclude that K had testified untruthfully, acted in bad faith or was otherwise engaged in a personal frolic, as such a conclusion would substitute its own judgment for that of the trier of fact, which evaluated the evidence and the witnesses' credibility firsthand. Argued November 14, 2024—officially released March 4, 2025