Convicted of accessory to murder, conspiracy to commit murder and attempt
to commit murder, the defendant appealed. The defendant’s conviction
stemmed from his participation in a drive-by shooting in which two
passengers in a car he was driving shot at a group of children on a street
corner, killing F and seriously wounding another. This court affirmed
the judgment and, thereafter, the defendant filed a petition for certifica-
tion with our Supreme Court, which granted the petition and remanded
the matter to this court to consider the defendant’s unpreserved claim
that the trial court committed plain error by erroneously instructing the
jury that the state did not need to prove that the defendant had the
specific intent to kill F in order to find him guilty of accessory to murder.
On remand, held that the defendant’s claim failed under a plain error
analysis because it was clear that the court correctly instructed the jury
that it did not have to find a specific intent to kill a particular victim
in order to find the defendant guilty of accessory to murder; that court
properly instructed the jury that to find the defendant guilty, it had to
find that he had the specific intent to kill, but that it did not have to
find that he intended to kill F specifically, as the murder statute (§ 53a-
54a) on its face allows for transferred intent for the crime of murder
such that, when a person engages in conduct with the intent to kill
someone, there can be a separate count for every person actually killed,
and under the circumstances here, the court’s instructions were correct
in law and were tailored to the evidence presented, which showed that
the defendant and his cohorts had no particular victim in mind when
they set out to engage in a retaliatory killing and fired more than seven-
teen bullets at the group of children on the street corner.
Argued September 26—officially released November 28, 2017 Procedural History