Summary
The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed Max Turner's convictions and seventy-eight-year sentence arising from a street shooting. The Court held that the Superior Court properly admitted a handgun found on a third party and did not commit plain error by failing to give a specific unanimity instruction.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the Superior Court abused its discretion by admitting a 9-millimeter handgun found on a third party several hours after the shooting.
- Whether the Superior Court committed plain error by failing to give the jury a specific unanimity instruction.
Holdings
- The Superior Court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the handgun because ample evidence connected it to the shooting and crime scene.
- A specific unanimity instruction was not required, and the absence of such an instruction was not plain error.
Key quotations
“Plain error must be “so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the fairness and integrity of the trial process.”” (at 3)
“The defects must be plain and clear from the record, and must be of a “basic, serious and fundamental” character such that they deprive the defendant of a fundamental right or reflect manifest injustice.” (at 3)
Factual background
Two people were shot during a street shooting on July 24, 2012, and one died. Police recovered 9-millimeter shell casings and a projectile at the scene and, within hours and blocks of the shooting, found a 9-millimeter handgun on Iban Rice, whom an eyewitness placed near Turner. Turner subsequently sent text messages indicating that Rice had been arrested with the gun and that Turner might be incarcerated for a long time.
Procedural history
A New Castle County grand jury indicted Turner on murder, assault, reckless endangerment, firearm-possession, and related charges. After a seven-day trial, the jury convicted him of all charges, and the trial judge separately found him guilty of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. The Superior Court imposed an aggregate sentence of seventy-eight years at Level V, suspended after sixty-nine years for decreasing levels of supervision. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed.