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STATE v. DAMON3/6/1990
The defendant, Kenneth Damon, appeals from his conviction of murder in violation of General
Statutes 53a-54a (a) The dispositive issues are: (1) whether the trial court erred in denying the defendant's motion to suppress inculpatory statements made by the defendant to the police; and (2) whether the trial court violated the defendant's constitutional rights of confrontation, compulsory process and due process when it admitted an autopsy report into evidence, under the business record exception to the hearsay rule. We find no error.
The jury could reasonably have found the following facts: On September 9, 1987, Monica Joyner was found stabbed to death in the basement of a three family dwelling in New Haven. The victim lived on the second floor with her husband and two young children. The first floor apartment was occupied by Prisilla Damon, the defendant's mother. Prisilla Damon lived alone, but the defendant occasionally stayed overnight at her apartment. The defendant worked the noon to eight p.m. shift at Bozzuto's Trucking Company in Cheshire. On the night of September 8, 1987, Prisilla Damon picked up the defendant at Bozzuto's, and at midnight, they returned to her apartment, where the defendant planned to spend the night.
At approximately 11:15 a.m. on September 9, Mitchell Stevenson, the owner of the building, left his third
floor apartment and walked down into the basement, and there discovered the victim lying face down in a pool of blood on the basement floor. The victim's clothing was in partial disarray. The victim had suffered multiple stab wounds to her upper body, head and face.
On the afternoon of September 9, Prisilla Damon went to the New Haven police station and gave a statement indicating that the defendant had been at her apartment that morning. Two plainclothes detectives, Francisco Ortiz and Leroy Dease, drove to Bozzuto's, where the defendant was working. The detectives asked the defendant if he would voluntarily accompany them to the New Haven police station to be interviewed in connection with a homicide they were investigating. The detectives informed the defendant that he was not under arrest, that he did not have to accompany them, and that he was free to leave if he chose to. The defendant agreed to accompany the detectives.
The defendant was taken to the detective division and given Miranda warnings. The defendant was not handcuffed, was not told that he was under arrest, and was not told that he was a suspect. The defendant never requested that he be allowed to go home.
Between 9 and 9:30 p.m. the detectives began questioning the defendant in a conference room. The defendant initially denied any knowledge of the victim
or her death. After several hours of questioning, however, at approximately 12:15 a.m. on September 10, the defendant gave a tape recorded confession in which he admitted killing the victim. The defendant claimed that he had acted in self-defense. He stated that the victim, while "high" on drugs, had knocked on the back door of his mother's apartment at approximately 9:30 a.m. and had asked him for some cocaine. He further stated that the victim took a knife from his mother's kitchen, then lured him down to the basement, where she attacked him with the knife. The defendant stated that during the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabbed the victim. The defendant told the police that he had wrapped he knife in a brown paper bag and had thrown it into a garbage can in front of the Dixwell Plaza shopping area.
The defendant was thereafter charged in a substitute information with murder, in violation of General Statutes 53a-54a (a). On May 2
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