Title: Williams v. State

State: delaware

Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court

Document:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
 
ROLAND WILLIAMS,  
 
§ 
§ 
Defendant Below,  
§ 
Appellant,  
 
§ No. 12, 2002 
§ 
v. 
 
 
 
 
§ Court Below: Superior Court 
§ of the State of Delaware in and 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
§ for Kent County  
§ Cr. ID No. 0102014259 
Plaintiff Below, 
 
§ 
Appellee. 
 
 
§ 
 
Submitted: June 4, 2002 
Decided: 
July 8, 2002 
 
Before WALSH, BERGER, and STEELE, Justices. 
 
Appeal from Superior Court.  REVERSED. 
 
Sandra W. Dean, Esquire, Assistant Public Defender, Office of the Public 
Defender, Dover, Delaware, for Appellant. 
 
 
William M. Kelleher, Esquire, Deputy Attorney General, Department of Justice, 
Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellee. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PER CURIAM: 
 
 
 
 
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In this appeal from the Superior Court, we once again confront the problem of 
improper prosecutorial argument.  We conclude that the prosecutor’s remarks, 
characterizing the defendant in this case as “lying” and proposing that the jury must 
find the State’s witnesses to be lying in order to acquit the defendant, were so patently 
improper that the trial judge should have intervened sua sponte to issue a curative 
instruction or enter a mistrial.  The court’s failure to do so was thus plain error, and we 
reverse. 
 
I. 
The appellant/defendant below, Roland Williams (“Williams”), was found guilty 
of delivering cocaine.  Because of Williams’ past felony convictions, the State moved to 
have him sentenced as an habitual offender, pursuant to 11 Del. C. § 4214(b).  
Following a hearing, the Superior Court granted the State’s motion and Williams was 
sentenced to life in prison.  This is Williams’ direct appeal. 
On the evening of February 15, 2001, police were conducting surveillance of the 
Kent Apartments on New Street in Dover, Delaware, a high drug area.  Officer Hosfelt 
of the Dover Police Department was positioned behind a second floor window with an 
unobstructed view of New Street, which was about fifty feet from the window.  Officer 
 
 
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Hosfelt observed Williams on the street below, and saw him approach a car that had 
pulled over in front of the Kent Apartments.  Through an open window, Officer 
Hosfelt heard Williams ask the driver of the vehicle what he wanted.  The driver was 
one William Scott, who drove to New Street that evening, alone, in order to purchase 
cocaine.  Scott testified that he asked Williams for a twenty dollar piece of crack 
cocaine.   
Officer Hosfelt further testified that he saw Scott hand Williams some money.  
Then, according to the officer, a third man came out of a nearby residence and took the 
money from Williams.  That man then passed drugs to Williams, which Williams 
immediately handed to Scott.  At this point, Officer Hosfelt radioed in what he had 
witnessed and Scott was apprehended a short distance away.  The police found a piece 
of crack cocaine in a baggie in Scott’s car.  Meanwhile, Officer Hosfelt maintained 
surveillance of Williams and directed another police car to respond to his location and 
place Williams under arrest.  After his arrest, Scott was brought back to the scene of the 
drug buy and asked to identify the seller.  By this time, Williams had already been 
arrested.  Scott identified Williams as the person who sold him the crack cocaine. 
At trial, Williams testified in his own defense that the third man had conducted 
the drug deal with Scott entirely on his own, and that he, Williams, was simply in the 
 
 
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wrong place at the wrong time.  The jury returned a guilty verdict on the single count 
charged and this appeal followed.  Williams challenges his conviction on various 
grounds.  He argues that the trial court erred by (1) failing to intervene, sua sponte, to 
cure the effect of improper prosecutorial argument, (2) excusing for cause two 
prospective jurors who expressed disagreement with drug laws, (3) permitting unduly 
suggestive identification of the defendant, (4) allowing the State to question the 
defendant about a prior conviction for delivery of cocaine, (5) giving a jury instruction 
on accomplice liability which did not include a specific unanimity instruction, and (6) 
granting the State’s habitual offender motion.  We conclude that the trial court’s failure 
to intervene to cure the prosecutor’s improper argument requires reversal. 
 
II. 
Williams argues that the prosecutor made several improper statements during 
closing argument that undermined the fairness of his trial.  Williams offered no 
objection at trial to the prosecutor’s closing argument, however, so this claim is 
reviewed for plain error.  See Supr. Ct. R. 8; Morris v. State, 795 A.2d 653, 657 (Del. 
2002).  In order for improper prosecutorial arguments to constitute plain error, 
credibility must be a central issue in a close case and the prosecutor's comments must be 
 
 
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so clear and defense counsel's failure to object so inexcusable that a trial judge, in the 
interest of fundamental fairness, has no reasonable alternative other than to intervene.  
Trump v. State, 753 A.2d 963, 964-65 (Del. 2000); see also Hughes v. State, 437 A.2d 559, 
571-72 (Del. 1981) (determining whether improper prosecutorial remarks require 
reversal, considering the centrality of the issue affected by the alleged error, the 
closeness of the case, and the steps taken to mitigate the effect of alleged error).  
For over twenty years, this Court has been admonishing prosecutors to follow 
ABA standards of conduct and refrain from making improper comments during 
summation that could prejudice the defendant.  See, e.g., Hooks v. State, 416 A.2d 189 
(Del. 1980); Hughes v. State, 437 A.2d 559 (Del. 1981); Brokenbrough v. State, 522 A.2d 
851 (Del. 1987).  Unfortunately, our admonitions have gone largely unheeded.  In 
Brokenbrough, we lamented the continued use by prosecutors of arguments in 
summation that have been declared improper by this Court as clearly in violation of 
professional norms.  522 A.2d at 861.  We refused to reverse the defendant’s conviction 
in Brokenbrough because we found that the prosecutor’s improper remarks did not rise to 
the level of plain error.  Id.  We, nonetheless, noted that:  
Delaware courts will provide safeguards against a repetition of the 
same type of specific conduct that had been held to be error, albeit 
harmless error. A repetition of the same type or category of errors 
adversely affects the integrity of the judicial process. The standards of 
 
 
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professional conduct in Delaware have never been and will never be 
measured by the lowest acceptable common denominator. 
 
We fully expect that our criticism here will not fall on deaf ears and 
that judicial admonition, even in the absence of reversal, will encourage 
the curtailment of the type of improper closing arguments we have been 
repeatedly called upon to review. In the future, such conduct will not be 
tolerated by this Court and must not be permitted by trial courts.  
 
Id. at 864.   
Despite this, and many similar comments, we continue to consider claims of 
improper prosecutorial comments in jury summations.  Most recently, this Court 
reversed an assault conviction in Morris v. State because the prosecutor argued to the 
jury that it could acquit the defendant only if it found that the State's witnesses were 
lying.  795 A.2d 653, 657 (Del. 2002).   In Morris we noted that this type of argument is 
“patently improper,” as explained sixteen years earlier in Fensterer.   Morris, 795 A.2d at 
660, citing Fensterer v. State, 509 A.2d 1106, 1112 (Del. 1986) (noting that a jury is “not 
required to choose between the State's and the defendant's version of the facts,” and 
that a defendant has “no affirmative burden to disprove the testimony of the police 
officers,” as implied by the prosecutor's remarks). 
In this case, Williams attacks statements made in closing argument on three 
grounds, arguing that the prosecutor (1) violated Morris by telling the jury that if they 
believed Officer Hosfelt, they must find the defendant guilty, (2) improperly labeled the 
 
 
7 
defendant as lying, and (3) improperly vouched for the credibility of Scott.  The State 
denies that any of the challenged statements were improper and argues that they 
constituted permissible comment on the evidence.  Illustrative of comments made 
throughout the summation, in conclusion, the prosecutor urged the jury: 
[W]hen you’re considering [Williams’] credibility . . . consider before your 
very eyes he lied because remember on direct examination he said to your 
very faces, he said, “I don’t sell drugs.  I just use them.”  That’s what he 
told you all.  Until he was confronted with the information that the State 
had that he had before been convicted of selling drugs.  Then he said, 
“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.”  Consider that.  Can you believe anything he says? 
 
Ladies and gentlemen, it comes down to - it’s a fairly simple case.  It 
comes down to whether you believe the State’s witnesses or the defendant. 
 You have police officers for the State.  You have Mr. Scott who you can 
determine whether or not you believe what he was saying.  You have the 
defendant, previously convicted of dishonesty, a person who has reason to 
lie today to you to try to get out of this whole mess that he’s gotten himself 
into, and a person who is - importantly, a person who was caught lying in 
front of your very eyes here in court today under oath. 
 
We have concluded that these remarks improperly suggested to the jury that they 
must believe the State’s witnesses are lying in order to acquit the defendant and 
improperly branded the defendant as lying.  See Morris, 795 A.2d at 660; Hughes, 437 
A.2d at 571.  The prosecutor’s earlier comment to the jury, suggesting that they 
consider that Scott’s “story” was the same as Officer Hosfelt’s, was permissible because it 
merely pointed out that two witnesses had testified in a consistent manner, and, 
 
 
8 
therefore, did not constitute improper vouching.  See Saunders v. State, 602 A.2d 623, 
624 (Del. 1984) (defining improper vouching as a prosecutor’s comment implying 
personal knowledge of the truth of a witness’ statement); Clayton v. State, 765 A.2d 940, 
944 (Del. 2001) (holding that a prosecutor’s assertion that the State’s witnesses had 
been consistent was permissible because it could be deduced from the evidence). 
Credibility determinations were central to this case.  Williams argued that the 
State had the wrong man, that Scott and Officer Hosfelt were mistaken.  The drug buy 
did take place at night.  Officer Hosfelt was, by his own admission, fifty feet away, and 
there was a third person present at the scene.  The jury had to decide whose version was 
accurate.  More importantly, the jury had to decide whether the State’s witnesses 
proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Williams was the seller.  The prosecutor’s 
argument to the jury was more than a mere simplification of an evidentiary difference.  
It reduced the dispute to a clash between the “story” of a defendant charged with selling 
drugs and a police officer, sworn to uphold the law.  The jury could have found, and 
indeed the defense argued, that the officer was merely mistaken in his identification, as 
was Scott, an admitted drug user.  Because this case hinged on credibility, we cannot say 
that the prosecutor’s improper remarks were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.   
 
 
9 
Furthermore, the prosecutor’s continued characterization of Williams as “lying” 
was both inflammatory and patently improper.  As we stated in Hughes, “liar is an 
epithet to be used sparingly in argument to the jury.”  437 A.2d at 571.  While there is 
no blanket prohibition on the use of the word, we once again admonish prosecutors to 
use care in applying such a flash word to situations, as here, when testimony labeled a 
“lie” could just as easily be characterized as mistaken.  See also Webster's Third New 
International Dictionary 1305 (unabr.1993) (defining lie as "to make an untrue 
statement with intent to deceive").   
On direct examination, Williams was asked: 
“Did you have any cocaine - were you a dealer?”  He responded, “No, ma’am, I only 
use.”  The State rebutted this testimony with evidence that Williams had been convicted 
of selling drugs several years ago in Florida.  While one conclusion to be drawn from 
this exchange is that Williams was lying, i.e., had an intent to deceive, an equally tenable 
 conclusion is that Williams was speaking in the present tense when he said that he only 
uses drugs, but does not sell them.  If the latter is the case, then Williams did not “lie,” 
but merely mistook the question asked or erred in its scope.  The question posed was 
not, “have you ever sold drugs?,” in which case his negative response could perhaps be 
characterized as a lie.  The prosecutor’s statement that Williams’ testimony was a lie 
“pass[ed] from a legitimate inference drawn from the evidence to the expression of an 
 
 
10 
impermissible personal opinion.”  Morris, 795 A.2d at 660, n. 15 (quoting Hughes, 437 
A.2d at 571).  
The prosecutor’s remarks were so clearly impermissible that the trial judge had a 
duty to intervene, notwithstanding the absence of an objection by defense counsel. 
Wainwright v. State, 504 A.2d 1096, 1100 (Del. 1986).  Accordingly, we reverse 
Williams' sentence and vacate his conviction.  
While our ruling that plain error exists requires reversal, we, nonetheless, in 
summary fashion rule upon the remaining claims of error to guide the court in the 
event of a new trial.   
 
Williams challenges several discretionary rulings of the Superior Court.  We find 
no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s decision to excuse two prospective jurors for 
cause, admit into evidence Scott’s on scene identification of Williams, or allow the 
State’s use of Williams’ prior felony conviction for impeachment, after performing the 
requisite analysis under D.R.E. 609(a)(1).  See Parson v. State, 275 A.2d 777 (Del. 1971); 
Watson v. State, 349 A.2d 738, 740 (Del. 1975); Morris v. State, 795 A.2d 653, 665 (Del. 
2002).  Additionally, we have determined that the inclusion of an accomplice liability 
instruction without a specific unanimity instruction did not render the jury 
instructions, as a whole, erroneous as a matter of law.  See Probst v. State, 547 A.2d 114, 
122 (Del. 1988) (holding general unanimity instruction is sufficient in routine case).  
 
 
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Finally, we have determined that the trial court’s decision to sentence Williams as an 
habitual offender was supported by substantial evidence, free from legal error, and does 
not constitute excessive punishment.  See Walker v. State, 790 A.2d 1214, 1221 (Del. 
2002); 11 Del. C. § 4214. 
The judgment of the Superior Court is REVERSED and this matter 
REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.