Summary
The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed Paul Weber’s conviction and sentence for Attempted Robbery First Degree following a retrial. The court held that police had no duty to preserve the shirt Weber wore at arrest and that the identification by Sergeant Hawk was neither impermissibly suggestive nor unreliable. The court rejected Weber’s remaining claims, including challenges involving jury voir dire, sufficiency of the evidence, jury instructions, prosecutorial misconduct, double jeopardy, and a modified plea agreement.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the trial court erred by denying Weber a missing-evidence instruction based on the State's failure to preserve his shirt.
- Whether Sergeant Hawk's out-of-court identification of Weber from surveillance footage was impermissibly suggestive and unreliable in violation of due process.
- Whether the trial court abused its discretion in asking prospective jurors questions concerning mental illness and illicit drug use.
- Whether the trial judge's conduct of the colloquy violated Weber's constitutional right to a fair trial.
- Whether the evidence was sufficient to support Weber's attempted first-degree robbery conviction.
- Whether the trial court was required sua sponte to explain the statutory wording or give a single-theory unanimity instruction.
- Whether the State committed prosecutorial misconduct violating Weber's due process rights.
- Whether cumulative punishment for attempted carjacking and attempted first-degree robbery violated double-jeopardy protections.
- Whether the trial court clearly erred in finding that Weber had rejected the State's modified plea agreement.
Holdings
- The State had no duty to preserve the shirt because police had no basis to believe that the shirt taken from Weber's bedroom was the shirt depicted in the surveillance footage or that it had exculpatory value. In any event, Weber was not entitled to a missing-evidence instruction because reliable secondary evidence and other evidence of guilt eliminated prejudice.
- Hawk's identification of Weber from the surveillance footage was neither impermissibly suggestive nor unreliable, so the testimony was properly admitted.
- The remaining claims concerning voir dire, the trial colloquy, sufficiency of the evidence, jury unanimity, prosecutorial misconduct, cumulative punishment, and the plea agreement did not warrant reversal.
Key quotations
“As we held in Lolly v. State, the State has a duty, ab initio, to gather and preserve evidence that may be material to a defendant’s guilt or innocence.” (275)
“An impermissibly suggestive identification procedure in and of itself does not require the exclusion of evidence.” (276-277)
“The ultimate question is whether or not the identification of the defendant was reliable.” (277)
Factual background
Frederick Naspo was approached at a gas station by a man who attempted to take his car keys and claimed to have a gun. Police detained Weber nearby, but Naspo did not identify him as the assailant during a showup. The next morning, Sergeant Hawk viewed surveillance footage, recognized Weber as the assailant based on the footage and his prior familiarity with Weber, and arrested him. Police did not preserve the blue shirt that Weber wore when arrested, although photographs and testimony concerning the shirt remained available.
Procedural history
Weber was initially convicted of attempted first-degree robbery and attempted first-degree carjacking. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the carjacking conviction but reversed the robbery conviction and remanded for a new trial because the trial court had improperly denied a lesser-included-offense instruction. After retrial, Weber was again convicted of attempted first-degree robbery, adjudicated a habitual offender, and sentenced to twenty-five years at Level V. The Supreme Court affirmed.