Case Title: Hamm v. State

Citation: 

Docket Number: 16, 2002

State: delaware

Court: Delaware Supreme Court

Date: 2002-06-07T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE
CHARLES W. HAMM,
)
)  No. 16, 2002
Defendant Below,
)
Appellant,
)  Court Below:  Superior Court
)  of the State of Delaware in
v.
)  and for New Castle County
)
STATE OF DELAWARE,
)  Cr. ID. No. 0011013269
)
Plaintiff Below,
)
Appellee.
)
Submitted:  May 21, 2002
Decided:  June 7, 2002
Before VEASEY, Chief Justice, WALSH and STEELE, Justices.
O R D E R
This 7th day of June 2002, on consideration of the briefs of the parties, it
appears to the Court that:
1)
In September 2001, a Superior Court jury convicted Appellant Charles
W. Hamm of Burglary in the Second Degree and Theft.  On October 22, 2001, the
State moved to declare Hamm a habitual offender pursuant to Del. Code Ann. tit.
11 § 4214(b).  The trial judge granted the motion and sentenced Hamm to a life
sentence at supervision Level V for the burglary conviction and thirty-one days at
supervision Level V for the theft conviction.  This is Hamm’s direct appeal.
2)
On August 28, 2000, Karon Masado returned to her house in
Wilmington after work and discovered that several items, including jewelry, had
been taken from her house.  Masado testified that upon entering her house she
2
noticed several items out of their normal place and her pet dogs acting in an
agitated manner.  Investigating further, she found her closet to be “a mess.”  After
finding the contents of at least one cardboard storage box in her closet empty, she
called the police.
3)
Officer Roger Cresto of the Wilmington Police Evidence Detection
Unit testified that he discovered latent fingerprints on the top and bottom of one of
the cardboard boxes in the closet.  Officer Joseph Sammons of the Wilmington
Police Identification Unit then matched those fingerprints with the known prints of
the Charles Hamm.  At trial, Officer Sammons testified that he was completely
certain that the prints on the box matched those of Charles Hamm.  He could not
say, however, based on his comparison of Hamm’s prints and those at the scene of
the crime, when the fingerprints had been left on the cardboard box.  No other
direct evidence linked Hamm to the burglary.
4)
Appellant claims that fingerprint evidence alone is insufficient for the
State to meet its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  He cites our
decision in Monroe v. State1 to support his position.  In Monroe, the State charged
the defendant with burglarizing an appliance store.  The only evidence linking
Monroe to the crime was a latent fingerprint found on a shard of glass at the point
of entry, which was on the public side of the front door.  We held that “the range of
abundant, innocent explanations for the presence of Monroe’s prints on the
plexiglass shards [was] too vast for any ‘rational trier of fact’ to have found
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beyond a reasonable doubt an essential element of both charged offenses--namely,
identity.”2
5)
The case before us is readily distinguishable on the facts.  In Monroe
we noted that fingerprint evidence might be enough to sustain a conviction when
the circumstances surrounding their presence create a “strong inference” that the
defendant was the perpetrator.  Among our primary inquiries in determining if this
strong inference exists are whether the prints were found in a public or private
structure and whether the defendant had special access to the object or the area in
which it was found.3  In this instance, there is no evidence in the record that Hamm
ever had access to either Masado’s residence or the cardboard box in question.
Thus, unlike Monroe, there is no abundance of innocent explanations on the
presence of Hamm’s fingerprints of the box in Masado’s residence.  Indeed the
evidence in the record leads to the strong inference that Hamm was, in fact, the
perpetrator.  Consequently, there is no merit to Hamm’s argument.
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior
Court be, and hereby is, AFFIRMED.
BY THE COURT:
_/s/ Myron T. Steele______________
Justice
                                                                                                                                                            
1 652 A.2d 560 (Del. 1995).
2 Id. at 567.
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3 Id. at 564.