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Advance Release Opinions - Review and Analysis

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Advance Release Opinions – December 13

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Connecticut Supreme Court

The Supreme Court advance released an opinion about criminal law. Though I don’t ordinarily review criminal law decisions, it’s easy enough to post the syllabus from the opinion, which I think I’m going to do for criminal cases from now on.

State v. Adams – Syllabus from the opinion: “Convicted of the crimes of attempted larceny in the sixth degree and breach of the peace in the second degree in connection with an incident in which the defendant attempted to shoplift a bag of items from a store before leaving that bag behind and fleeing, the defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, which reversed his conviction as to attempted larceny because there was no evidence that the items in the bag had belonged to the store. The Appellate Court reasoned that the store surveillance video had not captured the defendant’s placing of specific, identifiable store merchandise into the bag, and, although one of the investigating police officers testified that the store’s employees had determined the total dollar amount of the items in the bag, there was no evidence to substantiate how those employees arrived at that exact value. On the granting of certification, the state appealed to this court.

“Held that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that the evidence was insufficient to support the defendant’s conviction of attempted larceny, the evidence having supported a reasonable inference that the items in the bag belonged to the store and that the defendant intended to deprive the store of those items permanently without its consent: the fact finder could have reasonably inferred, from the evidence that the employees determined the exact value of the items in the bag, that those items had price tags on them from the store, which, together with
the surveillance video showing the defendant’s furtive movements, his resistance when store employees had attempted to stop him, his abandonment of the bag, and his flight from the store, raised a reasonable inference that the bag contained items owned by the store; furthermore, the defendant’s claim that the evidence of his flight could not be used to establish that a crime was committed was unavailing because, although evidence of flight, standing alone, may be ambiguous, it was for the fact finder to resolve that ambiguity under all of the relevant facts and circumstances.”

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