Title: Pena v. State
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 555, 2003
State: Delaware
Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court
Date: August 12, 2004

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
JOSE F. PENA, 
 
 
 
) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
)  No. 555, 2003 
 
 
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. 0209017118 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
) 
 
 
Plaintiff Below, 
 
) 
 
 
Appellee. 
 
 
) 
 
Submitted:  June 8, 2004 
Decided:  August 12, 2004 
 
Before STEELE, Chief Justice, HOLLAND and BERGER, Justices. 
 
 
Jerome M. Capone, Wilmington, Delaware for Appellant. 
 
 
Gregory E. Smith, Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware for 
Appellee. 
 
 
 
 
 
STEELE, Chief Justice: 
 
2
 
 
A Superior Court jury convicted Jose Pena of various drug-related charges.  
Pena moved in Superior Court for a mistrial based on a repeated reference to a 
narcotics investigation by a State’s witness as the impetus for an initial traffic stop.  
Counsel for both parties had agreed before trial that the witness would not refer to 
the drug investigation because of its potentially prejudicial effect upon the jury.  
The trial judge denied the motion after giving cautionary instructions to the witness 
and jury. 
 
After reviewing the record, we find that the trial judge acted appropriately 
within his discretion, this was not a close case, and that Pena was not denied a fair 
trial.    Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the Superior Court.   
I. 
 
Around noon on September 23, 2002, Appellant Jose Pena encountered 
Lakisha Brown on her way to a GED class at DelTech in Wilmington and asked if 
she would be interested in accompanying him to New York City later that day.  
Brown and Pena had met at a club two nights earlier.  Brown agreed and phoned a 
friend, Nicole Shaw, to see if she would join them.  Brown and Shaw thought that 
they would be going to New York City to go clubbing and have some money spent 
on them.  They also expected to prostitute themselves in exchange for money and 
marijuana.  Alex Rosa, a man unfamiliar to both Brown and Shaw, also 
accompanied them to New York City.  
 
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They departed Wilmington that afternoon and arrived at Pena’s mother’s 
apartment in the Bronx that evening.  Pena left the apartment for about half an hour 
to purchase some crack cocaine while Rosa, Brown, and Shaw sat down to eat 
dinner. When Pena returned he asked Brown and Shaw to go into the bathroom 
with him where he broke a large piece of cocaine into two pieces and placed it into 
two plastic bags.  He then asked the two women to place it into their vaginas in 
order to conceal it during the return trip to Delaware.  The women agreed to do so.   
 
Before they left New York City to return to Delaware, Pena and Rosa 
stopped to buy some marijuana.  While Pena and Rosa were out of the car making 
the purchase, Brown and Shaw removed the cocaine from their vaginas, broke off 
some small pieces, and placed them in Shaw’s purse.  They returned the remaining 
cocaine to their vaginas.  Upon their return to Wilmington, the police, acting on a 
tip, stopped the gold Acura in which they were traveling near the intersection of 
Maryland Avenue and South Broom Street.  The car improperly displayed a 
temporary tag.  The police recovered almost 32 grams of crack cocaine from the 
women’s purse and vaginas. 
 
Pena was arrested and later testified that he knew nothing about the drugs.  
He said the three dropped him off in New York City, that he went to his mother’s 
house alone by taxi, and that they later picked him up for the trip back to 
Delaware.   
 
4
 
After a three day Superior Court trial, a jury convicted Pena of:  Trafficking 
in Cocaine; Possession with Intent to Deliver Cocaine; Maintaining a Vehicle for 
the Delivery of a Controlled Substance; Conspiracy in the Second Degree; and 
Criminal Impersonation.  He was sentenced, inter alia, to a total of 16 years at 
Level V, suspended at various points for decreasing levels of probation.   
II. 
 
Pena insists that the repeated improper references to a “drug investigation” 
as the purpose for stopping Pena’s car by the State’s witness so prejudiced his right 
to a fair trial that his motion for a mistrial should have been granted.  He maintains 
that the repeated, prejudicial references by the State’s witness, and the denial of the 
motion for a mistrial, ultimately forced him to change his trial strategy and testify 
in his own defense.     
 
Before trial, the prosecutor and defense counsel agreed that no police 
witness would mention the narcotics investigation that led to the traffic stop and 
Pena’s arrest.  The prosecutor cautioned Detective Vincent Jordan before he took 
the stand not to cite the drug investigation as the reason he stopped Pena’s car.  
Shortly thereafter, the following exchange took place during direct examination of 
Detective Jordan:   
 
Q.  What was your assignment those early evening hours?   
 
A.  Conducting a drug investigation.   
 
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The defense objected and, after a sidebar conference, the objection was overruled.  
The judge did not directly prohibit Detective Jordan from using the phrase “drug 
investigation,” but he did suggest that the prosecutor “lead him through this” by 
asking him: “Did he stop the car?”  Five answers later, Detective Jordan said that 
he asked the two women if he could question them “in regard to the other 
investigation.”  The defense did not object to this response.   
 
Finally, when asked about his interaction with Brown during the traffic stop, 
Detective Jordan responded that she had given him a false name and that he 
mentioned that he was “conducting an investigation in regards to narcotics.”  The 
defense objected and the trial judge instructed the witness to refrain from 
references to drug investigations.  He also instructed the jury to disregard the 
witness’s last response.1  Detective Jordan made no more references to the 
investigation.  After Detective Jordan’s testimony was finished, defense counsel 
moved for a mistrial.  The court reserved judgment but later denied the motion.   
III. 
 
A trial judge sits in the best position to determine the prejudicial effect of an 
unsolicited response by a witness on the jury.2  We review the denial of a motion 
for mistrial after an unsolicited response by a witness for abuse of discretion or the 
                                                 
1 The trial judge said:  “Objection sustained.  The jury will disregard that last answer, all such 
references hereafter by the witness should [not be] used.  The Court is allowing this only to 
explain what—just leave it at that.”   
2 Taylor v. State, 690 A.2d 933, 935 (Del. 1997).   
 
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denial of a substantial right of the complaining party.3  In doing so, we consider the 
nature and frequency of the conduct or comments, the likelihood of resulting 
prejudice, the closeness of the case and the sufficiency of the trial judge’s efforts to 
mitigate any prejudice in determining whether a witness’s conduct was so 
prejudicial as to warrant a mistrial.4   
 
The prosecutor cautioned detective Jordan before he testified not to mention 
the narcotics investigation during his testimony.  Jordan’s two objectionable 
references did not constitute an outburst nor were they intentionally non-
responsive.  Both were direct answers to otherwise routine, specific questions.  
There is no suggestion that Jordan intended to circumvent the prosecutor’s 
admonition on the trial judge’s ruling.  Importantly, Jordan did not persist after 
being instructed by the trial judge to refrain from making further reference to a 
drug investigation.   
 
The two references to an unspecified narcotics investigation are unlikely to 
have misled the jury or to have prejudiced Pena unfairly.  We note that Detective 
Jordan referred only generically in both instances to an investigation.  The first 
reference was in response to his “assignment” on the evening of the incident.  The 
                                                 
3 Id.  
4 Griffith v. State, No. 570, 2002, 2003 Del. LEXIS 254, at *5 (Del. 2003); Taylor, 690 A.2d at 
935  First, the Court examines the nature, persistency, and frequency of the outburst.  Second, 
the Court considers whether the outburst created a likelihood that the jury was misled or 
prejudiced.  Third, the Court examines the closeness of the case.  Fourth, the Court considers the 
trial judge’s attempt to mitigate any prejudice. 
 
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second reference was in direct response to a question about what he said to Brown 
during her detention at the time of the traffic stop.  Detective Jordan’s testimony 
did not reveal that Pena was the target of the investigation, or that the traffic stop 
was a part of the Pena investigation.   
 
Further, the record makes it clear that it was not a close case.  Pena was 
seated in the front passenger seat of a car that had just returned from a trip to New 
York City when drugs were found on two other passengers.  Receipts from travel 
plazas along the way confirmed testimony about the travel.  Brown and Shaw both 
testified that they were carrying the cocaine as instructed by Pena.  They testified 
that Pena invited them to New York City, purchased the cocaine, and then asked 
them to conceal the drugs in their vaginas until they returned to Delaware.  The 
jury chose to believe their testimony.  The fact that they admitted to drug use and 
prostitution made them more credible and likely, not less likely, to be acting as 
mules in drug trafficking.5   
 
Finally, the trial judge took steps to mitigate any prejudice that may have 
resulted from the “investigation” comments.  Prompt jury instructions are 
presumed to cure error and adequately direct the jury to disregard improper 
                                                 
5 See e.g. Malloy v. United States, 605 A.2d 59, 60 (D.C. 1992) (describing the practice of drug 
dealers using other individuals as “mules” to transport drugs from place to place in order to 
reduce the risk that they will be caught with drugs on their own person).   
 
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statements, even when the error references extraneous offenses.6  In Dawson, a 
witness referred to the defendant’s previously overturned death penalty conviction.  
The judge instructed the jury to disregard and this Court held that it was an 
adequate instruction.  Like an extraneous offense, an ongoing drug investigation 
can arouse prejudice that a defendant is more likely to have committed the alleged 
crime.  Here, as in Dawson, the trial judge acted appropriately by both instructing 
the witness not to make any more references to a drug investigation and instructing 
the jury to disregard the witness’s comment.   
 
Mistrials are required “only where there is ‘manifest necessity’ or the ‘ends 
of public justice would be otherwise defeated.’”7  Here, the references to a 
narcotics investigation were not so prejudicial that they required a mistrial.  This 
was not a close case and the trial judge’s instructions to both witness and jury were 
sufficient to mitigate any prejudice to Pena.  The trial judge’s instruction 
appropriately kept the jury focused on the incident in question and did not 
unnecessarily compound the effect of the references to a narcotics investigation.  
Further, the trial judge correctly reasoned that while the jury may have been 
                                                 
6 Dawson v. State, 637 A.2d 57, 62 (Del. 1994) (jury instruction sufficient to cure prejudice even 
when the error references extraneous offenses); Brown v. State, No. 528, 2000, 2001 Del. LEXIS 
325, at *3 (Del. 2001) (juries are presumed to understand and follow instructions issued by the 
Superior Court); Zimmerman v. State, 628 A.2d 62, 66 (Del. 1993) (jury instruction usually 
sufficient to remedy prejudice caused by improper admission of evidence).       
7 Davis v. State, 1999 WL 86055, at *2 (Del.) (quoting Steckel v. State, 711 A.2d 5, 11 (Del. 
1998)).   
 
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curious about why Pena’s car was stopped, the instruction tended to deflect any 
speculation that it was the result of a narcotics investigation. 
 
Finally, Pena cites no legal authority to support a reversal of his conviction 
and sentence because he was “forced to change his trial strategy and testify in his 
own defense.”  Pena fails to show how his testimony harmed his case.  Because 
this argument rests on a supposition that a mistrial should have been declared, and 
we have found otherwise, Pena’s contention has no merit. 
IV. 
 
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Superior Court is hereby 
AFFIRMED.