State v. Jermain

196 Conn.App. 387

229 A.3d 1157

STATE of Connecticut

v.Jermain V. RICHARDS

AC 43140

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued November 19, 2019

Officially released March 10, 2020

Norman A. Pattis, Bethany, for the appellant (defendant).

Kathryn W. Bare, assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were John C. Smriga, state's attorney, Joseph T. Corradino, senior assistant state's attorney, and Ann F. Lawlor, senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Keller, Prescott and Bishop, Js.

BISHOP, J.

The defendant, Jermain V. Richards, appeals from the judgment of conviction, rendered after a third jury trial, of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a (1).¹ On appeal, the defendant claims that (1) there was insufficient evidence to support a conviction and (2) the court erred in not giving a special credibility instruction applicable to the testimony of a cooperating witness.² We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. In April, 2013, the victim was a sophomore at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU). At that time, she had been dating the defendant, who was ten years her senior, since she was in high school. The victim often stayed with her grandmother, especially on the weekends, at her grandmother's house in West Haven. At the time of the victim's disappearance, the defendant resided in the basement area of his mother's house at 115 Beardsley Park Terrace in Bridgeport; however, he also owned a two-family housing unit at 1719 Hubbell Avenue in Ansonia. The defendant rented out the second floor unit of the Ansonia property.

In the days following April 20, 2013, after the victim had failed to respond to various phone calls and text messages and after she had failed to attend her classes, the ECSU Department of Public Safety commenced a missing person investigation with the assistance of the Connecticut State Police. Over the course of that investigation and in order to ascertain the victim's whereabouts, approximately forty-five investigators conducted 400 interviews, executed nineteen search warrants, and searched more than twenty-five different locations. The defendant became a person of interest on or about April 26, 2013, when the police learned that he was the last person to have been with the victim. Police suspicion of the defendant's involvement in the victim's disappearance heightened upon learning more about the nature of the relationship between the victim and the defendant, including events that transpired in the months leading up to her disappearance. Those events tended to show that the defendant was seeking to control the victim to the extent that, at times, he stalked her when she sought to go out without informing him of her whereabouts and, over the months leading up to the victim's disappearance, he had become increasingly violent toward her.

Specifically, prior to her disappearance, and throughout the course of her relationship with the defendant, the victim was constantly on her phone texting or speaking with the defendant, even while she was spending time with her family and friends. The victim's sister, Chaharrez Landell,³ described the defendant as possessive, obsessive, controlling, and manipulative because he always had to know where she was, with whom, and what she was doing.

If, and when, the defendant was unable to connect with the victim, he would contact her friends, Chaharrez, and her brother-in-law, Dumar Landell, to ascertain her activities and location. Once, the defendant went so far as to call Dumar, after speaking to Chaharrez, to confirm the veracity of Chaharrez' answers with regard to the victim's whereabouts, and he explained to Dumar that "[w]e can't trust these bitches."

Additionally, in the year prior to her disappearance, there were three separate instances in which the defendant either showed up uninvited to the location where the victim was or the defendant was spotted waiting for the victim, without prior communication or permission. More specifically, one night when the victim, Chaharrez, and Dumar were coming back from a club in Bridgeport and were heading for her grandmother's home in West Haven, they discovered the defendant parked on a hill near the home. Prior to their arrival, the victim had ignored phone calls from the defendant or directed them to her voicemail. When the victim saw the defendant's car, she instructed Dumar to keep driving while she ducked down in her seat to avoid being seen. All three of them waited around the corner for a few hours until they saw that the defendant was no longer in the area.

On another occasion, the victim, Chaharrez, and Dumar, again, were returning from a club in Bridgeport when they stopped at a restaurant to use the restroom. When the victim came out of the restaurant, she spotted the defendant in the parking lot and immediately went to talk with him for a few minutes before returning to Chaharrez and Dumar in order to go back to ECSU. Prior to that interaction, the defendant was not invited by the victim to join her, nor had the victim shared with the defendant where she intended to be. On another night, when the victim was staying with Chaharrez and Dumar in their Waterbury apartment, the fire alarm went off, requiring immediate evacuation of the building. Once outside, Dumar, Chaharrez, and the victim were surprised to discover that the defendant was also outside, without having previously made his presence known to the victim.

In March, 2013, approximately one month before the victim's disappearance, she called Chaharrez asking for a ride from a house in Norwalk, where she was staying with the defendant. Chaharrez stated that the victim was frantic, scared, and spoke in a whisper. The victim told Chaharrez that she and the defendant had gotten into an argument during which the defendant choked her. The victim said that the defendant had put her in a headlock, thrown her on the bed, and tried to suffocate her. Additionally, the victim told Chaharrez that she could not breathe and she implored her to come and pick her up immediately. Chaharrez further testified that, once she and her husband arrived, the victim snuck out of the house while the defendant was asleep, got her belongings out of the trunk of the defendant's car, and got into Chaharrez' car where she presented as upset, crying, and relieved to have been picked up. Once in the car, the victim said that she did not want to be in a relationship with the defendant anymore, but did not know how to break up with him. Chaharrez stated that this incident was not reported to the police and that, even though the victim lived with her for the remainder of the school break, she saw the victim in the company of the defendant just three days after this incident and learned that the defendant had purchased new clothes for the victim and groceries to bring back to school.

At a point in time close to the choking incident, the defendant purchased a car from a former high school acquaintance, Jevene Wright. Upon returning to pick up license plates for his new car, the defendant confided in Wright that the victim had cheated on him and broken up with him using Facebook.⁴ The defendant also told Wright that the victim "doesn't know who she's messing with, you know, I'm a nurse and I'll get rid of her." At a later date, shortly before the victim's disappearance, the defendant and Wright spoke over the phone, during which the defendant admitted that he had choked the victim because he was "upset" at the time. Later, the victim told Chaharrez and Dumar that she was looking to end her relationship with the defendant, but did not know how to do it.

On April 20, 2013, the victim was scheduled to attend a luncheon with one of the ECSU organizations for which she was the secretary. The victim, however, informed friends and colleagues that she would be unable to attend because she needed to go home to her grandmother. Video surveillance footage revealed that the victim exited her campus residence hall at or about 12:25 p.m. on April 20, 2013, and, shortly thereafter, entered the defendant's car to leave campus. The defendant's mother, Leonie McQueen, said she encountered the victim, in the company of the defendant, briefly at her Bridgeport residence at or about 2:15 p.m. on April, 20, 2013, while she was getting ready for work. The victim was never again seen alive.

After the victim was reported missing and the search for her had commenced the week following April 20, 2013, police made several discoveries that culminated in the defendant's arrest and subsequent prosecution. First, the police learned that the defendant failed to report for his shift at work on Sunday, April 21, 2013, from 3 to 11 p.m., but made it to his second shift, that same day, beginning at 11 p.m. Second, the state police's K9 unit discovered human remains, in the form of an arm and a leg, approximately 1.5 miles from the defendant's Bridgeport residence. The DNA of both limbs matched the DNA from the victim's toothbrush, which was obtained from her ECSU residence. Third, the defendant was a licensed practical nurse, and the two medical examiners determined that the limbs were removed postmortem, by the use of a sharp instrument.⁵ Fourth, the defendant's 2009 Nissan was searched and seized on April 26, 2013, and, when examined, the interior of the car appeared to the police to have been recently detailed. Fifth, cellular site location information analysis revealed that the victim's phone last connected to a tower closest to the defendant's Bridgeport residence at or around 4:02 p.m. on April 20, 2013, reasonably creating the inference that either the phone had been turned off or discarded at around that time on the same date as her disappearance. Sixth, the police searched both the defendant's Bridgeport and Ansonia residences. At the Ansonia residence, in the unit belonging to the defendant, the police discovered that...