Title: Loper v. State

State: delaware

Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court

Document:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
TYRELL LOPER,  
 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 § 
No. 394, 2022 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 § 
 
 
Defendant Below,  
 § 
 
 
Appellant,  
 
 §   
Court Below—Superior Court 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 § 
of the State of Delaware 
 
 
v. 
 
 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 § 
Cr. ID No.:  1809005786 (N) 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 § 
 
 
Appellee. 
 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Submitted: April 26, 2023 
 
 
 
 
 
Decided: 
May 31, 2023 
 
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA and TRAYNOR, Justices. 
 
 
ORDER  
This 31st day of May, 2023, after consideration of the parties’ briefs and the 
record on appeal, it appears to the Court that: 
(1) 
Tyrell E. Loper appeals from the Superior Court’s denial of his motion 
for postconviction relief under Superior Court Criminal Rule 61.  Loper’s motion 
contained one claim:  that his trial counsel failed to challenge a search warrant that, 
according to Loper, was based on a legally deficient search-warrant application.  
More specifically, Loper alleges that the application was based on unreliable 
informant hearsay and failed to establish probable cause that contraband would be 
found in Loper’s apartment.  That being so, Loper contends that it was objectively 
unreasonable for his trial counsel to refrain from mounting a challenge to the 
warrant. 
2 
 
(2) 
The search warrant that led to Loper’s arrest was granted and executed 
on September 10, 2018.  The affidavit supporting the search warrant application 
stated that the Wilmington Police Department had corroborated tips from two 
confidential informants and one confidential source that Loper was distributing 
heroin and cocaine from an apartment at 812 North Adams Street.  As will be 
discussed below, the principal means by which the police corroborated the tips was 
a controlled drug purchase.  Armed with the search warrant, the police conducted a 
search of the apartment, where they found crack cocaine, heroin laced with fentanyl, 
drug paraphernalia, and documents linking Loper to the apartment. 
(3) 
At the conclusion of a bench trial, Loper was convicted of heroin drug 
dealing, cocaine drug dealing, and possession of drug paraphernalia charges.  After 
a presentence investigation, the Superior Court sentenced Loper to an aggregate of 
25 years of incarceration, suspended after four years for two years of decreasing 
levels of supervision.  This Court affirmed Loper’s convictions judgment on direct 
appeal.1   
(4) 
Loper filed a timely pro se motion for postconviction relief under 
Superior Court Criminal Rule 61 and moved for appointment of counsel.  After that, 
Loper’s appointed counsel filed an amended motion for postconviction relief, in 
which Loper claimed that his trial counsel failed to challenge the search warrant on 
 
1 Loper v. State, 234 A.3d 159, 2020 WL 2843516 (Del. June 1, 2020) (TABLE). 
3 
 
probable cause grounds and that, as a result, he suffered prejudice.  Loper’s 
amended motion asked the Superior Court to “grant all appropriate postconviction 
relief.”2  In accordance with the court’s order, Loper’s trial counsel filed an affidavit 
in response.   
(5) 
The Superior Court, first finding no procedural bars, assessed Loper’s 
ineffective-assistance claim under the two-pronged test established in  Strickland v. 
Washington.3  In denying the claim, the court found that Loper failed to establish, 
under Strickland’s first prong, that his trial counsel’s performance was objectively 
unreasonable.  It held that Loper’s trial counsel’s representation did not fall below 
the objective standard of reasonableness because “the facts contained within the 
warrant were sufficiently corroborated” and “[w]ithin the four corners of the 
warrant, there is probable cause to search North Adams Street.”4  Loper appealed 
to this Court. 
(6) 
Loper asserts on appeal that the Superior Court abused its discretion, 
because no reasonable lawyer would have failed, as his trial counsel did, to 
challenge the search warrant for lack of probable cause.  First, he contends that the 
search warrant relied on uncorroborated information provided by informants who 
were not properly established as “past proven reliable.”  Second, he claims that the 
 
2 App. to Opening Br. at A321. 
3 466 U.S. 668 (1984). 
4 State v. Loper, 2022 WL 4394721, at *4 (Del. Super. Ct. Sept. 21, 2022). 
4 
 
affidavit supporting the search warrant application did not sufficiently link the 
controlled drug purchase to Loper’s apartment.  More specifically, according to 
Loper, because the police surveillance of the controlled buy did not permit the 
police to watch the confidential informant enter Apartment #1 of the building at 812 
North Adams Street, but only the building itself, they did not have probable cause 
to believe that the transaction was tied to Apartment #1.   A review of the search 
warrant application demonstrates that both of Loper’s claims are without merit. 
(7) 
Over the course of the month preceding the application for and issuance 
of the search warrant, the detective who applied for the warrant was told by three 
confidential informants that an individual, known to them as “Diddy” and described 
as “a short, medium built black male with a beard in his thirties,”5 was storing and 
distributing heroin and cocaine from an apartment known as 812 North Adams 
Street, Apartment #1.  After the first informant, identified as “CI1” in the warrant 
application, provided this information, the detective arranged for the informant to 
engage in a controlled purchase of heroin from “Diddy” at the apartment. 
(8) 
In his warrant application and affidavit, the detective described the 
mechanics of the controlled purchase: 
Your affiant can truly state that during the first half of August 2018, a 
meeting was conducted with CI1 for the purpose of conducting a 
controlled narcotics purchase from “Diddy”.  CI1 was checked for 
contraband and currency, was supplied with a sum of departmentally 
issued buy money, and was instructed to respond to 812 N. Adams St 
 
5 App. to Opening Br. at 24–25. 
5 
 
Apt #1[] for the purpose of purchasing heroin.  Your affiant and 
assisting members of the [Drug Organized Crime and Vice Division] 
maintained constant visual contact with CI1 as they responded to same.  
It should be noted that prior to CI1’s arrival, a short black male subject 
fitting the given description of the target was observed entering the 
residence.  CI1 was observed entering the front main door where they 
remained for a brief period before exiting.  Upon leaving the area, 
constant visual contact was maintained until CI1 arrived at a 
predetermined meeting place.  CI1 was again searched for contraband 
and currency and provided your affiant with an amount of powdery 
substance consistent with packaged heroin (submitted to evidence).  
CI1 was able to positively identify “Diddy” as the individual who 
provided them with the heroin.6  
(9) 
All three informants were shown DELJIS7 rapsheet photographs of 
Tyrell Loper and confirmed that the depicted individual was the drug dealer they 
knew as “Diddy.” 
(10) The third informant stated that, in addition to using the apartment for 
drug sales, Loper also used “a white in color Crown Victoria or Grand Marquis style 
vehicle to store illegal contraband,”8 and that the vehicle was kept in a parking lot 
near Loper’s North Adams Street residence.  The detective noted in his warrant 
application that he had spotted a white car matching that description in the described 
location and that the car appeared to remain stationary. 
(11) In the affidavit he filed in compliance with the Superior Court’s order 
in the Rule 61 proceeding, Loper’s trial counsel explained that he evaluated the 
 
6 Id. at A24. 
7 “DELJIS” stands for Delaware Criminal Justice Information System. 
8 App. to Opening Br. at A25. 
6 
 
search warrant application and concluded that the controlled heroin purchase and the 
verification of the presence of the white car where the third informant said it would 
be provided sufficient corroboration of the informants’ tips.  This, according to 
Loper’s trial counsel, is “why no Motion to Suppress was filed.”9  We take this to 
mean that Loper’s trial counsel, in the exercise of his professional judgment, 
concluded that a motion to suppress the fruits of the search conducted under the 
warrant would have been a futile exercise. 
(12) We agree with the Superior Court that trial counsel’s decision not to 
move to suppress was not objectively unreasonable.  In so holding, we note that 
“review of counsel’s representation is subject to a strong presumption that the 
representation was professionally reasonable.”10  Had the police relied exclusively 
on the informants’ tips, we might look at Loper’s claim differently.  Admittedly, the 
description of the informants’ past veracity and reliability is conclusory and likely 
insufficient under Valentine v. State.11  But search-warrant affidavits must be 
“considered as a whole and not on the basis of separate allegations.”12  Here, the 
controlled purchase of heroin from Loper in the apartment that was searched under 
the warrant by itself justified Loper’s trial counsel’s decision to forgo a motion to 
 
9 Id. at A324.  
10 Flamer v. State, 585 A.2d 736, 753 (Del. 1990). 
11 207 A.3d 566, 572–73 (Del. 2019) (finding a reference to an informant as a “past proven reliable 
confidential informant” insufficient, standing alone, to establish the informant’s credibility). 
12 Gardner v. State, 567 A.2d 404, 409 (Del. 1989) (quoting Jensen v. State, 482 A.2d 105, 111 
(Del. 1984)). 
7 
 
suppress.  That two other informants corroborated what the police had learned from 
the first informant and the controlled purchase provided further, if unnecessary, 
support for counsel’s decision. 
(13) Relatedly, we reject Loper’s contention that, because the police only 
saw the first informant enter Loper’s apartment building13—and not his specific 
apartment—during the controlled purchase, “the warrant failed to give rise to 
probable cause that contraband would be found within [Loper’s] individual 
apartment rather than the multi-unit complex as whole.”14  This argument ignores 
the fact that all three informants identified Loper’s apartment as the site of his illicit 
drug activity.  It also ignores that the police “instructed [CI1] to respond to 812 N. 
Adams St Apt #1[] for the purpose of purchasing heroin.”15  These allegations 
supported “a practical, common-sense decision,” when considered together with all 
the circumstances described in the warrant application, that there was a fair 
probability that contraband or evidence of a crime would be found in Loper’s 
apartment.16 
 
13 The warrant application describes 812 North Adams Street as a “residence” and Apartment #1 
as “the downstairs apartment to the immediate left.”  Photographs of the residence, though not a 
part of the warrant application but admitted at trial as Defendant’s Exhibits 1 and 5, show that 812 
North Adams Street is a two-story row house. 
14 Opening Br. at 8. 
15 App. to Opening Br. at A24. 
16 State v. Holden, 60 A.3d 1110, 1114 (Del. 2013) (“The magistrate issuing the warrant must 
make a practical, common-sense decision whether, given all the circumstances set forth in the 
affidavit . . . there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a 
particular place.”). 
8 
 
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior 
Court be AFFIRMED.  
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
BY THE COURT:  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/ Gary F. Traynor 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice