Justia Delaware Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Defendant was convicted of first degree murder and appealed a superior court judge's denial of his second motion for postconviction relief. At issue was whether the sidebar commentary defendant's counsel made to the trial judge during a pretrial hearing created an unlawful "appearance of impropriety," violated defendant's due process rights, and denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The court held that the relevant circumstances did not disclose any "appearance of impropriety" sufficient to reverse the judgment and grant a new penalty phase where the court did not find an unacceptable risk that a reasonable observer would believe that bias influenced the trial judge. The court also held that the superior court judge did not violate defendant's due process rights where there was no evidence proving reliance on counsel's remarks. The court further held that defendant was not denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel where there was no "complete" failure of counsel and defendant failed to establish actual prejudice sufficient to warrant relief. Accordingly, the judgment of the superior court was affirmed.

Defendant was charged with nineteen counts in a final re-indictment related to charges of attempted murder, reckless endangering, firearm charges related to attempted murder charges, aggravated menacing by a firearm, aggravated intimidation of a witness, criminal solicitation, disregarding a police officer, resisting arrest, and reckless driving. At issue was whether the trial judge abused his discretion when he decided that a single complaint by the jury during trial, that some members had difficulty hearing one videotaped section 3507 statement, justified departure from the general default rule that such statements did not go into the jury during deliberations. The court held that the jury certainly should not be permitted to "work through" the recorded section 3507 statement during their deliberations until it was understandable and the undue emphasis placed upon the section 3507 evidence by its unwarranted admission into the jury's deliberative process was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the court reversed the judgment and remanded for a new trial.

Defendant appealed a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol when she was arrested by police officers and performed field sobriety tests. At issue was whether defendant's motion to suppress intoxilyzer test results was erroneously denied where defendant asserted that her success on the field sobriety tests constituted "overwhelming evidence" that she was not impaired by alcohol. The court held that the motion was properly denied where the Superior Court applied a proper totality of the circumstances analysis in deciding to deny the motion and where the performance results of field sobriety tests could either eliminate or elevate suspicion into probable cause but had insufficient evidentiary weight to eliminate probable cause that was already established by the totality of the circumstances before the tests were performed.