Title: Urquhart v. State
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 287, 2015
State: Delaware
Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court
Date: February 26, 2016

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
EVERETT URQUHART, 
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§  
No. 287, 2015 
 
Defendant Below,  
 
§ 
 
 
Appellant,  
 
 
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Court Below:  Superior Court  
§  
of the State of Delaware 
v. 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
Cr. ID No. 1407012946 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
 
 
Plaintiff Below, 
 
 
§ 
 
Appellee. 
 
 
 
§ 
 
Submitted:   February 24, 2016 
Decided:   February 26, 2016 
 
Before HOLLAND, VALIHURA, and SEITZ, Justices. 
 
ORDER 
 
 
This 26th day of February, 2016, it appears to the Court that: 
(1) 
On July 15, 2014, Corporal Paul Demarco responded to an armed 
robbery at a corner store in Wilmington.  He briefly checked on the store occupants 
and then walked up the street where he saw a woman.  The woman told Corporal 
Demarco that she saw someone flee the area and described the getaway car and 
license plate.  Subsequent investigation linked Everett Urquhart to the robbery.  At 
trial, Urquhart objected to Corporal Demarco’s account of the unknown woman’s 
statement about the vehicle as hearsay and as a violation of his constitutional right 
to confront witnesses.  The Superior Court overruled the objection.  A jury 
convicted Urquhart of robbery and related crimes.  Urquhart has now appealed, 
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challenging the Superior Court’s evidentiary ruling.  After a careful review of the 
record, we agree with the Superior Court that the unknown woman’s statement 
qualified as an exception to the rule against hearsay and was not testimonial.  
Therefore we affirm the judgment of the Superior Court. 
(2) 
On July 15, 2014, a masked man wearing a black North Face coat and 
ski mask walked into the Lesly Grocery, a corner store in Wilmington.  He 
approached the cashier and pulled out a gun.  The robber demanded that the cashier 
hand over the money in the register and fired the gun near him.  A security camera 
documented the robbery.  Another camera captured a dark-colored Chrysler 300 
driving by the store seventy six seconds before the robbery. 
(3) 
Wilmington Police Corporal Paul Demarco was on duty that day in 
the vicinity of the crime scene.  A construction crew flagger approached Corporal 
Demarco and told him that someone was shooting inside the Lesly Grocery.  After 
briefly checking on the welfare of the store occupants, Corporal Demarco walked 
up the street and encountered an unidentified woman.  She appeared calm, but was 
whispering quietly as if she did not want to be seen speaking to police.  The 
woman told Corporal Demarco that she saw someone flee the area and get into a 
green, four-door sedan.  She also gave him its license plate number.  Less than two 
minutes passed between the time Corporal Demarco radioed that he was 
responding to the call and the time he radioed the license plate number.   
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(4) 
DMV records showed that Caree Matsen owned a green Chrysler 300 
bearing the license plate number that the woman provided.  Matsen testified that 
she had loaned her car to her sister’s boyfriend, Everett Urquhart.  Police searched 
Matsen’s residence and found Urquhart’s belongings in Matsen’s sister’s bedroom.  
Police also found several pictures of Urquhart wearing a black North Face jacket 
with a hood.  Urquhart was arrested and charged with robbery.  
(5) 
At trial, the State sought to introduce through Corporal Demarco the 
unidentified woman’s statement describing the vehicle and license plate.  The State 
argued that the statement was admissible as an excited utterance and as a present 
sense impression, exceptions to the rule against hearsay.  Urquhart objected, 
arguing that the exceptions did not apply, and also that the statement was 
testimonial and thus its admission would violate the Confrontation Clause of the 
United States Constitution.  The Superior Court overruled the objection and 
permitted Corporal Demarco’s testimony.  The court reasoned that the woman’s 
statement was not testimonial because the situation qualified as an emergency.  
The court also found that under the circumstances, it could infer that the woman 
spoke to the officer immediately after the startling event while she was still under 
the stress of it, invoking the exceptions to the rule against hearsay.  
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(6) 
After a three-day trial, a jury convicted Urquhart of robbery first 
degree,1 possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony,2 possession of 
a firearm by a person prohibited,3 reckless endangering,4 and wearing a disguise 
during the commission of a felony.5  The Superior Court sentenced Urquhart to 15 
years at Level V incarceration followed by decreasing levels of supervision.  This 
appeal followed. 
(7) 
On appeal, Urquhart argues that the Superior Court erred by admitting 
the unidentified woman’s hearsay statements about the car.  He also contends that 
because the statement was testimonial, its admission violated his constitutional 
right to confront witnesses at trial.  We review the Superior Court’s decision to 
admit or exclude evidence based on hearsay for abuse of discretion.6  “An abuse of 
discretion occurs when a court has exceeded the bounds of reason in view of the 
circumstances, or so ignored recognized rules of law or practice to produce 
injustice.”7  To the extent an evidentiary ruling implicates constitutional questions, 
our review is de novo.8 
                                                 
1 11 Del. C. § 832. 
2 11 Del. C. § 1447. 
3 11 Del. C. § 1448. 
4 11 Del. C. § 604. 
5 11 Del. C. § 1239. 
6 Nalley v. State, 935 A.2d 256 (Del. 2007) (Table). 
7 Wright v. State, 25 A.3d 747, 752 (Del. 2011) (quoting Floudiotis v. State, 726 A.2d 1196, 
1202 (Del. 1999)). 
8 Capano v. State, 781 A.2d 556, 607 (Del. 2001). 
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(8) 
Hearsay statements are generally inadmissible.9  But “present sense 
impression and excited utterance are both well recognized exceptions to the 
general evidentiary rule against hearsay.”10  The present sense impression 
exception in Rule 803(1) permits the admission of a “statement describing or 
explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event 
or condition, or immediately thereafter.”  Under Rule 803(1), the declarant must 
personally perceive the event and the statement must explain or describe the 
event.11  The statement does not have to be exactly contemporaneous with the 
event, but it must respond to it and occur a short time thereafter.12  
(9) 
For example, in Wheeler v. State,13 a woman heard gun shots in her 
house and ran toward the sound.  In the kitchen, she witnessed her sister’s 
boyfriend shoot her mother’s boyfriend and run away.  Shortly after, she told her 
sister what she saw.  This Court determined that the woman’s statement to her 
sister was a present sense impression because it was a “personal perception by an 
eyewitness describing the event and made immediately after the shooting.”14 
(10) Wheeler is analogous to this case.  The unidentified woman witnessed 
the robbery and the ensuing getaway.  She saw a man get into a green car, noted 
                                                 
9 D.R.E. 802. 
10 Wheeler v. State, 36 A.3d 310, 314 (Del. 2012); see also D.R.E. 803(1); D.R.E. 803(2). 
11 Abner v. State, 757 A.2d 1277 (Del. 2000) (Table). 
12 Id. 
13 36 A.3d 310. 
14 Id. at 314. 
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the license plate number, and described that information to Corporal Demarco.  It 
took less than two minutes from the time Corporal Demarco arrived at the scene, 
checked on the store occupants, spoke to the woman, and relayed the information 
over the radio.   Given these facts, the Superior Court did not abuse its discretion 
or err as a matter of law when it ruled that the statement was a present sense 
impression and not hearsay. 
(11) The statement was also admissible under the excited utterance 
exception of Rule 803(2).  To qualify as an excited utterance, the proponent must 
show: “(1) the excitement of the declarant [was] precipitated by an event; (2) the 
statement being offered as evidence [was] made during the time period while the 
excitement of the event was continuing; and (3) the statement [was] related to the 
startling event.”15   
(12) This case is similar to Nalley v. State.16  In Nalley, a bystander 
observed the defendant drive into a residential neighborhood at a high rate of 
speed.  The defendant jumped from the vehicle while it was still moving and ran 
through the neighborhood.  A short time later, police arrived on the scene.  The 
bystander volunteered information regarding the defendant’s clothing and his 
direction of travel.  We held that the statement was an excited utterance because a 
                                                 
15 Gannon v. State, 704 A.2d 272, 274 (Del. 1998). 
16 935 A.2d 256 (Del. 2007) (Table). 
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person “hurriedly fleeing from a car in a neighborhood followed by police officers 
at night could reasonably prompt an excited utterance from local residents.”17 
(13) Like Nalley, the statement in this case qualified as an excited 
utterance.  The unidentified woman who gave the statement saw the car speeding 
away from the robbery, and gave a description of the car and the license plate 
number.  Her statement was precipitated by the robbery, and the statement was 
made almost contemporaneous with the robbery and related to the robbery.  
Although the record does not directly confirm the excited state of the declarant, we 
can reasonably infer that she was excited, given the circumstances.  The woman 
had peered into the grocery store during the commotion, so she likely heard the 
gunshot and knew a robbery just occurred.  Even though the witness appeared calm 
and spoke quietly, she was likely attempting to avoid being seen assisting the 
police.  Under these circumstances, it was not error for the Superior Court to find 
that she was “excited” at the time of the event.18  Therefore, all of the elements of 
the test for an excited utterance were satisfied, and the Superior Court did not 
abuse its discretion by admitting the statement into evidence.  
(14) Finally, Urquhart argues that the admission of the unidentified 
woman’s statement violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses 
against him because the statement was testimonial.  He argues if he had been able 
                                                 
17 Id. at *4. 
18 See Wright, 25 A.3d at 752. 
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to cross examine the woman, he could have exposed a reasonable doubt as to the 
accuracy of her statement.  In Crawford v. Washington19 the United States 
Supreme Court held that the Confrontation Clause bars the “admission of 
testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was 
unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-
examination.”20  A statement is testimonial “when the circumstances objectively 
indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of 
the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later 
criminal prosecution.”21   
(15) At the time Corporal Demarco asked the woman if she had seen 
anyone run by, he was attempting to control a situation where an armed robbery 
had just occurred and a man who fired a gun at a store cashier was fleeing the 
scene.  The witness answered the officer voluntarily and did so to assist him in an 
ongoing emergency “rather than simply to learn what happened in the past.”22  
Therefore, the Superior Court correctly held that the statement was not testimonial 
and therefore did not implicate the Confrontation Clause.   
 
                                                 
19 541 U.S. 36 (2004). 
20 Id. at 53-54; see also Jones v. State, 940 A.2d 1, 11 (Del. 2007). 
21 Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 822 (2006); see also Jones, 940 A.2d at 11. 
22 Davis, 547 U.S. at 822; see also Nalley, 935 A.2d 256 (bystander’s unsolicited statements to 
police were not testimonial because the primary purpose was to assist the police with an ongoing 
emergency). 
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NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior 
Court is AFFIRMED. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BY THE COURT: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/ Collins J. Seitz, Jr. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice