State v. Adams
State v. Adams
Opinion
**299
The issues that we must resolve in these certified appeals by the defendant, Lorenzo Adams, and the state are whether the Appellate Court correctly concluded that (1) the defendant's conviction of breach of the peace in the second degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-181 was supported by the evidence, and (2) the defendant's conviction of attempted larceny in the sixth degree in violation of General Statutes § 53a-49 and General Statutes (Rev. to 2005) § 53a-125b
1
was not
*945
supported by the evidence. The defendant was charged with a variety of offenses after he attempted to steal merchandise from a Marshalls department store in Danbury and engaged in a scuffle with the store's security personnel. After a trial to the court, the defendant was found guilty of breach of the peace in the second degree and attempted larceny in the sixth degree, and the court rendered judgment accordingly. The defendant appealed from the judgment of conviction to the Appellate Court, which affirmed the conviction of breach of the peace and, in a split decision, reversed the conviction of attempted larceny. See
State
v.
Adams
,
The record reveals the following facts that the trial court reasonably could have found and procedural history. On September 23, 2006, the defendant went to the men's department of the Marshalls department store in Danbury. The defendant's activities after he entered the men's department were recorded on an eighteen minute surveillance video. 2 Approximately thirty seconds into the video recording, the defendant removed an item, which appeared to be either a jacket or a suit, from a clothing rack. The defendant then carried the item to a corner of the store where his entire body, except for the top of his head, was hidden by a merchandise display. When he left the corner several seconds later, he was not carrying anything. Approximately six minutes later, the video recording showed the defendant carrying a pair of shoes in his right hand and another item in his left hand. Several minutes later, the defendant returned to the same corner of the store where, over the course of about three minutes, he repeatedly glanced **301 around furtively, ducked and looked down as if doing something with his hands. The defendant eventually emerged from the right end of the merchandise display carrying a plastic bag in his left hand, which appeared to be either empty or only partially filled, and other items in his right hand. He then can be seen placing items in the bag, at which point he returned to the hidden area behind the merchandise display. Several seconds later, the defendant emerged from the left end of the merchandise display without the bag and continued to browse around the store and to pick up merchandise. After approximately two minutes, he returned to the same corner. Several seconds later, he again emerged from the right end of the merchandise display and again appeared to be placing items in a bag. The defendant can then be seen walking to the front of the store with a heavily loaded plastic bag. Without going through *946 any checkout line, he headed toward the exit. At that point, a man and a woman, identified at trial as Marshalls' loss prevention officers Joseph Fernandes and Christine Nates, approached the defendant from inside the store. Fernandes and Nates wore similar dark colored smocks over their clothes. There was a brief scuffle between the defendant and the officers, during which Nates grabbed the bag from the defendant. The defendant then ran out of the store.
Shortly thereafter, Sergeant Vincent LaJoie and Officer Jose Pastrana of the Danbury Police Department responded to a report of a larceny in progress at Marshalls. LaJoie arrived first and obtained a description of the defendant from Fernandes and Nates. Pastrana arrived shortly thereafter and accompanied Fernandes and Nates to the store's loss prevention office where he viewed the video recording of the defendant in the store. Meanwhile, LaJoie searched for the suspect in the parking lot of the shopping plaza. Upon seeing the defendant, LaJoie notified the police dispatcher that he **302 had located the suspect, and then LaJoie approached him. Shortly thereafter, Pastrana, Fernandes and Nates arrived at the scene, and the loss prevention officers identified the defendant as the person who had attempted to steal items from the store. The defendant was arrested and ultimately charged with, among other crimes, attempted larceny in the sixth degree and breach of the peace in the second degree. Specifically, the long form information alleged that the defendant committed attempted larceny in the sixth degree when he "attempted to take a jacket from the [Marshalls] store ...."
Fernandes and Nates were unavailable to testify at trial. 3 Pastrana testified without objection, however, that he had been informed, presumably by Fernandes and Nates, that the value of the merchandise that was in the bag that the defendant had attempted to carry out of the store was approximately $979. Specifically, when asked whether he knew what merchandise the defendant was trying to take, Pastrana responded that he did not know what specific items were in the bag, but "the total amount that they gave me-they ran up ... was approximately $979 and change."
The trial court found the defendant guilty of attempted larceny in the sixth degree and breach of the peace in the second degree. The defendant appealed from the judgment of conviction to the Appellate Court, which concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support the conviction of breach of the peace in the second degree;
State
v.
Adams
, supra,
With respect to the conviction of attempted larceny in the sixth degree, a majority of the Appellate Court concluded that "there is no evidence that the items that the defendant tried to exit Marshalls with belonged to the store. The surveillance footage does not capture the defendant's placing of specific, identifiable store merchandise into the bag before making off with it, and there was no evidence before the trial court that the contents of the bag that the defendant abandoned belonged to Marshalls. It is entirely conceivable that the defendant entered Marshalls with the bag, and that the bag contained items from somewhere else. To the extent that the state argues that evidence of value may, by itself, establish that the items belonged to Marshalls, we reject that position as well. For all we know, Fernandes and Nates guessed the value that they reported to Pastrana. We have no evidence to substantiate how they concluded that the items valued $979. In the absence of some evidence, we conclude that the court could not infer ownership from value without speculating."
State
v.
Adams
, supra,
**304
Judge Beach dissented from the judgment reversing the defendant's conviction of attempted larceny in the sixth degree. He contended that the video recording and Pastrana's testimony regarding the value of the merchandise in the bag gave rise to a reasonable inference that "the defendant was engaged in the process of collecting items from the store and placing them in the bag" and that innocent explanations for the defendant's behavior were implausible. Id., at 826,
These certified appeals followed. The defendant claims that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that the evidence supported his conviction of breach of the peace in the second degree because no reasonable person could find that he had the intent to impede a lawful activity when he scuffled with Fernandes and Nates. After examining the record on appeal and considering the briefs and the arguments of the parties, we have concluded that the defendant's appeal should be dismissed on the ground that certification was improvidently granted. The issue that the defendant raises was fully considered in the opinion of the Appellate Court, and it would serve no useful purpose to repeat that discussion here. See, e.g.,
State
v.
Dyous
,
We agree, however, with the state's claim that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that the evidence was insufficient to support the defendant's conviction of attempted larceny in the sixth degree. We begin with the standard of review. "In [a defendant's] challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence ... [w]hether we review the findings of a trial court or the verdict of a jury, our underlying task is the same.... We first review the evidence presented at trial, construing it in the light most favorable to sustaining the facts expressly found by the trial court or impliedly found by the jury. We then decide whether, upon the facts thus established and the inferences reasonably drawn therefrom, the
**305
trial court or the jury could reasonably have concluded that the cumulative effect of the evidence established the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." (Internal quotation marks omitted.)
State
v.
Drupals
,
"We have repeatedly acknowledged that it does not diminish the probative force of the evidence that it consists, in whole or in part, of evidence that is circumstantial rather than direct.... It is not one fact, but the cumulative impact of a multitude of facts which establishes guilt in a case involving substantial circumstantial evidence." (Internal quotation marks omitted.)
State
v.
Buhl
,
General Statutes (Rev. to 2005) § 53a-125b (a) provides: "A person is guilty of larceny in the sixth degree when he commits larceny as defined in section 53a-119 and the value of the property or service is two hundred fifty dollars or less." General Statutes § 53a-119 provides in relevant part: "A person commits larceny when, with intent to deprive another of property or to appropriate the same to himself or a third person, he wrongfully takes, obtains or withholds such property from an owner...." Thus, the essential elements of larceny are: "(1) the wrongful taking or carrying away of the personal property of another; (2) the existence of a felonious intent in the taker to deprive the owner of
**306
[the property] permanently; and (3) the lack of consent of the owner." (Internal quotation marks omitted.)
State
v.
Smith
,
We conclude in the present case that the evidence supports the defendant's conviction of attempted larceny in the sixth degree. The video recording showed the defendant carrying a suit or jacket to a corner of the store, where he was hidden by a merchandise display, and leaving the corner without the items. It also showed the defendant carrying other merchandise around the store and returning repeatedly to the same corner, where he glanced furtively around and engaged in activity that did not appear to be normal shopping behavior. At one point, the defendant emerged from the right end of the merchandise display carrying an empty or nearly empty plastic bag in one hand and items in the other. He then put some items in the bag, returned to the hidden portion of the corner and emerged at the left end of the merchandise display without the bag. At the end of the video recording, the defendant emerged from behind the merchandise display with a heavily loaded plastic bag and then headed toward the exit without first going through the checkout lanes. When Fernandes and Nates confronted the defendant as he tried to leave, he did not demand an explanation from them or seek assistance from others, **307 as it would have been natural for him to do if he had been attempting to leave the store with his own property. Rather, he abandoned the bag full of items and ran away. Marshalls employees later told Pastrana *949 that they "ran up" the value of the merchandise in the bag as "$979 and change."
We conclude that this evidence overwhelmingly supports a reasonable inference that the items in the bag belonged to Marshalls and that the defendant intended to deprive Marshalls of the property permanently without its consent. Indeed, we agree with Judge Beach that it is simply implausible that the defendant would have entered the Marshalls store with a bag full of his own belongings, hidden the bag in the corner behind the merchandise display, carried Marshalls merchandise to that area, taken his belongings out of the bag and then put them back in, and then abandoned the bag when confronted by Fernandes and Nates. We also disagree with the Appellate Court's conclusion that Pastrana's testimony regarding the value of the items in the bag did not imply that Marshalls owned them because it was possible that Fernandes and Nates had simply guessed the value. It was perfectly reasonable for the trial court to infer, from the very specific dollar amount that Pastrana gave, that Fernandes and Nates "ran up" the items on a cash register or calculator and, therefore, that the items must have had price tags on them from Marshalls. It simply defies common sense to conclude that they might have guessed a value of "$979 and change."
The defendant contends that, to the contrary, the state failed to prove the elements of attempted larceny because it did not present any evidence that would have allowed the trial court to ascertain the precise identity of the goods, and, without such evidence, ownership cannot be established. The defendant cites no authority, however, for the proposition that evidence sufficient
**308
to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the goods at issue were owned by the alleged victim of the theft, but not the specific nature of those goods, is insufficient as a matter of law to establish ownership for purposes of an attempted larceny charge. Rather, in each case cited by the defendant in which the evidence was found to be insufficient to establish a theft, the specific identity of the goods alleged to have been stolen was established, but the state failed to prove either ownership or a wrongful taking. See
People
v.
Cowan
,
The defendant's reliance on the principle that the state must present evidence of the corpus delicti is also misplaced. See
State
v.
Harris
,
The defendant further contends that evidence of flight from the scene of a crime is probative only on the issues of identity or intent, and it cannot be used to establish that a crime was committed in the first instance. In support of this claim, the defendant cites a number of cases in which evidence of flight was used to establish identity or intent. See
State
v.
Cerilli
,
The general rule is that, in the absence of a limiting instruction, the finder of fact is "entitled to draw any inferences from the evidence that it reasonably would
**310
support."
Curran
v.
Kroll
,
The defendant relies on
*951
Maughs
v.
Charlottesville , supra,
The judgment of the Appellate Court is reversed only with respect to the defendant's conviction of attempted larceny in the sixth degree and the case is remanded to that court with direction to affirm the judgment of the trial court, the judgment of the Appellate Court is affirmed in all other respects, and the defendant's appeal is dismissed.
In this opinion the other justices concurred.
General Statutes (Rev. to 2005) § 53a-125b was amended by No. 09-138, § 6, of the 2009 Public Acts, which increased the maximum value of the property obtained from $250 to $500. In this opinion, all references to § 53a-125b are to the 2005 revision unless otherwise indicated.
The video recording was not continuous but showed a series of still pictures at the rate of approximately one per second.
We note that the trial took place in 2014, more than seven years after the incident at the Marshalls store.
In
Maughs
, the defendant fled from the scene after he was observed by police officers making multiple trips between his automobile and an area where a railway company was storing railroad track "tie plates."
Maughs
v.
Charlottesville , supra,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- STATE of Connecticut v. Lorenzo ADAMS
- Cited By
- 11 cases
- Status
- Published