State v. Kyle A.

307 A.3d 249

348 Conn. 437

STATE of Connecticut

v.KYLE A.^*

(SC 20721)

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued October 25, 2023

Officially Released January 30, 2024

Julia K. Conlin, assigned counsel, with whom was Emily Graner Sexton, assigned counsellor the appellant (defendant).

Rocco A. Chiarenza, senior assistant state’s attorney, with whom, on the brief, was Margaret E. Kelley, state’s attorney, for the appellee (state).

McDonald, D’Auria, Mullins, Ecker, Alexander, Dannehy and Cradle, Js.

DANNEHY, J.

₄₄₀The defendant, Kyle A., was convicted, following a jury trial, of burglary in the first degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-101 (a) (1) (burglary), as well as certain other offenses, after unlawfully entering a residence and destroying certain property therein. We granted certification to appeal from the judgment of the Appel- late Court affirming, inter alia, the trial court's judgment of conviction of burglary.¹ In the present appeal, the defendant contends that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that" the trial court had not committed plain error when it failed to give a jury instruction identifying the crime that he allegedly intended to commit when he unlawfully entered or remained in the residence. We conclude that, although the trial court’s instruction did not conform to the language that this court has repeatedly endorsed, the trial court did not commit plain error. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. At the time of the incident that led to his arrest and conviction, the defendant had been living in Maryland but had made plans to move back to Connecticut. He intended to stay at a residence in West Haven that was owned by the defendant’s mother, J, but was in the sole possession and control of the defendant’s brother, A, who lived there with his daughter, who was eight years old at the time of the incident.²

₄₄₁The morning after he had been expected to arrive at the residence, the defendant called A and made statements that led A to believe that he was intoxicated. A advised the defendant that he would not be allowed into the home if he had been drinking because A’s daughter was there. The defendant agreed to wait until he was no longer intoxicated before coming to the house. In two subsequent conversations that day, A reiterated that the defendant could not come to the home if he was intoxicated. During their third and final conversation, the defendant told A that he was coming to the house "whether [A] [liked] it or not …."

When the defendant arrived at the residence that afternoon, only A and his girlfriend, T, were present.³ The defendant, who did not have a key, began yelling and banging on the front door. When no one let him in, he broke a back door window and entered the home. A and T fled the hopse and sought aid from their neighbors. They then observed the defendant, who had emerged from the house and was in the driveway, repeatedly striking A’s car with a baseball bat.

By the time the police arrived shortly thereafter, the defendant had gone back into the home and began "destroying things …." When the defendant eventually came out of the house and the police were taking him into custody, he yelled at A that he was "going to kill [A] when [he got] out of this," a threat that he repeated later that day at the police station. Upon investigating the interior of the home, the police discovered shards of wood that they identified as fractured pieces of the baseball bat, as well as a television, a ceramic tabletop, and kitchen chairs that had been smashed.

The defendant was charged with burglary, criminal mischief in the first degree (criminal mischief), and ₄₄₂threatening in the second degree (threatening) for his actions during the confrontation. Following his arrest, a criminal protective order was issued. The defendant was subsequently charged with criminal violation of a protective order, tampering with a witness, and attempt to commit criminal violation of a protective order. At trial, defense counsel neither requested an instruction on the burglary charge nor objected to the proposed instruction that the court had distributed to the parties for review. The trial court instructed the jury on that charge in relevant part: "[A] person is guilty of burglary in the first degree when he unlawfully enters or remains in a building with the intent to commit a crime therein and he is armed with a dangerous instrument.

* * *

"The second element is that the defendant unlawfully entered or remained in the building with the intent to commit a crime in that building. A person acts intentionally with respect to a result when his conscious objective is to cause such result. Even if the defendant never actually committed a crime in the building, if the evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that there was such an intention, this is sufficient to prove the defendant unlawfully entered or remained in the building with the intent to commit a crime therein. Furthermore, the necessary intent to commit a crime must be an intent to commit either a felony or misdemeanor in addition to the unlawful entering or remaining in the building."

The jury ultimately returned a guilty verdict on all six charges pertaining to the incident at A’s residence and the defendant’s subsequent behavior. The defendant then appealed to the Appellate Court from the judgments of conviction. In that appeal, the defendant claimed, among other things, that, when instructing the jury on the second element of the crime of burglary ₄₃₃that the defendant unlawfully entered or remained in the building with the intent to commit a crime therein–the trial court committed plain error when it failed to identify (1) the crime the defendant allegedly intended to commit, and (2) the elements of that crime, See State v. Kyle A., 212 Conn. App. 239, 259–60, 274 A.3d 896 (2022).

The Appellate Court affirmed the defendant’s burglary conviction, reasoning that there was no plain error because the alleged error did not involve a failure to include mandatory statutory language or produce a manifest injustice. Id., at 260–68, 274 A.3d 896. Although the Appellate Court noted that the trial court should have instructed the jury in more detail on the second element, it ultimately concluded that the omission was "unlikely to have guided the jury to an incorrect verdict …." Id., at 262–63, 274 A.3d 896. In reaching that conclusion, the Appellate Court pointed to the trial court’s direction regarding intent to commit a felony or misdemeanor, the facts reflected in the evidence, and the prosecutor’s suggestion during closing argument that the facts evinced the defendant’s intent to commit three different crimes: criminal mischief, based on his destructive behavior inside of the home, threatening A, and assaulting A. Id., at 262, 274 A.3d 896. This certified appeal followed.

[1, 2] Before this court, the defendant renews his claim that the trial court committed plain error by failing to identify and explain to the jury the elements of the crime he allegedly intended to commit while he was inside of the house, thereby allowing the jury to craft its own understanding of what constitutes a felony or misdemeanor. He contends that, without more specific guidance from the court, the jury could have decided that any behavior it considered morally offensive—such as his intention to confront his brother in his home—was a crime and, therefore, improperly have found the intent element to be satisfied on that basis., Noting that ₄₄₄only jury instructions carry the weight and authority of the court, the defendant also rejects the contention that his criminal mischief conviction, the evidence presented at trial, or the prosecutor’s references to possible intended crimes in her closing argument could compensate for this omission. Although we share the Appellate Court’s concerns regarding the trial court’s failure to describe the intended crimes; State v. Kyle A., supra, 212 Conn. App. at 262-63, 274 A.3d 896; we conclude that the defendant has not met the exceptionally high bar for demonstrating plain error in this case.

[3, 4] "It is well established that a defendant is entitled to have the jury correctly and adequately instructed on the pertinent principles of substantive law." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Singleton, 292 Conn. 734, 768, 974 A.2d 679 (2009). In the present case, to establish that the defendant committed burglary, the state was required to prove that he entered or remained unlawfully in A’s residence with intent to commit a crime therein and was armed with a dangerous instrument. See General Statutes § 53a-101 (a) (1).

[5] This court has consistently observed that, when giving a jury charge under § 53a-101 (a); (1), it is the "better practice" for the trial court to instruct the jury "on the statutory names and definitions of [the] specific crimes for which there was sufficient evidence of an intent to commit." State v. Smith, 194 Conn. 213, 220, 479 A.2d 814 (1984); see also Connecticut Criminal Jury Instructions 9.2-1, available at http://www.jud.ct.gov/JI/Criminal/Criminal.pdf (last visited January 24, 2024).⁴ Such an instruction informs the jury, the members of which are rarely well versed in legal principles, exactly what ₄₄₅behavior is at issue and on what basis it should evaluate it. It thereby mitigates the risk that the jury will confuse conduct that is criminal with that which is merely unsavory. See, e.g., State v. Langdell, 187 Vt. 576, 581, 989 A.2d 556 (2009) ("[w]ithout being aware of the elements of the intended crime, a juror might mistakenly convict a defendant on faulty assumptions about what is criminal and what is not").

[6–8] Relying primarily on this authority, the defendant in the present case contends that the trial court committed plain error when it failed to instruct the jury on the statutory names and elements of the...