Court Opinion

ID: 7839482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-08 16:57:24.657951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:59:07.115917
License: Public Domain

Shea, J.,
dissenting. Although I agree with the remainder of the majority opinion, I would find error in the refusal of the trial court to charge the jury that, upon the evidence presented, the defendant could not be found guilty of both attempted murder and sexual assault in the first degree.
A person who renders his victim unconscious and then has sexual intercourse with her in that condition commits sexual assault in the first degree, provided that he had such a purpose in mind at the time he was using force on the victim. He would have then compelled “another person to engage in sexual intercourse by the use of force against such other person” in violation of General Statutes § 53a-70. If the use of force was with the intention of killing the victim, however, as required for a conviction of attempted murder under General Statutes §§ 53a-49 and 53a-54a, the actor could not simultaneously have harbored the purpose of having intercourse with a living victim, as is essential for first *68degree sexual assault. The concurrent intention he might have entertained could have been only to have sexual contact with a dead body, involving the crime of sexual assault in the fourth degree. General Statutes § 53a-73a (a) (3). In this case, therefore, the jury could not reasonably have found that the defendant, while he was using force, intended both to kill the victim and to have intercourse with her while she was alive, given the sequence that the sexual assault followed the attempt to murder, as the evidence unquestionably established.
Accordingly, I dissent.