State v. Villar

Citations

• 194 Conn. App. 864

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of the crimes of unlawful discharge of a firearm, carrying a pistol without a permit, risk of injury to a child and reckless endangerment in the first degree, the defendant appealed to this court. The defendant's conviction stemmed from an incident in which he fired a shot from a pistol into B's home after having purchased marijuana from B and fighting with him outside of the home. B's girlfriend and her five year old daughter were in the home at the time of the shooting. At trial, the state called B to testify regarding his account of the incident, including that the defendant had pulled a pistol from his waistband and fired a shot into a first floor window of his home. The defendant's friend M, who was with the defendant when he purchased the marijuana from B and witnessed the incident, also provided testimony for the state, the majority of which corroborated B's account of the incident. In addition, M testified that the defendant handed him the pistol as they fled the scene together following the shooting. The police recovered the pistol from M when they subsequently apprehended him and the defendant. The state also presented testimony from forensic examiners who testi- fied that a bullet and shell casing found at B's home was fired by the pistol that was recovered from M and that a buccal swab of the defen- dant's DNA linked the defendant to that pistol. Held that the defendant could not prevail on his claim that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find him guilty because the state presented insufficient evi- dence to prove that he was the shooter: on the basis of compelling circumstantial evidence elicited from B, M's eyewitness testimony and the DNA evidence linking the defendant to the pistol that was used to fire the bullet into B's home, the jury reasonably could have concluded that the defendant was the individual who committed the shooting, and although the defendant challenged the competency of M as a witness an