State v. Durga
State v. Durga
Opinion of the Court
The information charged the defendant with having violated General Statutes § 53-81 in committing wilful injury to a private building in Norwich on December 7, 1967. After a trial to the court the defendant was found guilty and sentenced, and he has appealed. The statute provides for the imposition of criminal penalties upon “[a]ny person who wilfully injures any building other than a
The court could reasonably have found the following facts. On December 7, 1967, a Thursday, about 8 p.m., David Trachtenberg, while inside his store, Trachtenberg’s, 150 Main Street, Norwich, which was open for business, heard a crash of glass. A rock, about six inches in diameter, he discovered, had broken a window in the front of the store. Trachtenberg went outside, saw the defendant, Donald W. Durga, whom he had known for seven or eight years, and who had, six or seven years ago, worked for Trachtenberg’s, standing about ten feet from the window on the sidewalk in front of the store, and said “Hello.” At the time there were a number of other people on Main Street. About a half hour later, around 8:30 p.m., Frank Davis, a boy fourteen years old, came to Trachtenberg, told him his name, and said that he saw the defendant throw the rock through the window. As a result of this information Trachtenberg made a complaint to the police officer investigating the incident, which had taken place on his beat. At about 10:45 o’clock on the same night, Davis gave the police a signed and sworn statement, in the presence of his mother, as to what he saw take place. This statement was needed to support the issuance of an arrest warrant against the defendant. Frank Davis was about twenty feet from Donald Durga when he saw him throw a rock at the window. At the trial, Davis was presented as a witness for the state. He testified that it was not Donald Durga who threw the rock
The court concluded that (1) the defendant was guilty of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt; (2) the statement of Frank Davis was given to the police voluntarily and without duress; (3) Frank Davis, as a result of the visit of the defendant before trial, was put in fear and was afraid of Donald Durga, and his testimony was influenced by this fear; and (4) upon the facts and reasonable inferences therefrom the defendant was guilty as charged.
In his assignment of errors, the defendant attacks the court’s finding in its failure to adopt the defendant’s phraseology in the finding of a subordinate fact; error is also assigned in the conclusions stated above, in the admission of the written statement of Davis as an exhibit, and the conclusion upon all the evidence that the defendant was guilty of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. We need to consider only the last question, since the general assignment requires an examination by us of all the evidence, and such a claim must be determined by the evidence and not by a finding of facts. Practice Book § 995; State v. Salvaggio, 152 Conn. 716, 717. This would necessarily include the claim relating to the propriety of admitting the challenged exhibit.
It is clearly apparent from the evidence that the defense was centered on the sole issue of identification. It sought to infuse doubt, not on the issue that the crime charged had been committed, but that it may have been the defendant’s brother and not the defendant who had committed the crime. This effort to cast uncertainty on the identification of the culprit is disposed of by the defendant’s own testimony. He asserted that he strongly resembled his brother;
There is no error.
In this opinion Wise and Macdonald, Js., concurred.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.