Court Opinion

ID: 9352027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-04 17:01:41.577919+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:57:47.665818
License: Public Domain

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE

DEVIN COLEMAN,                       §
                                     §   No. 83, 2022
     Defendant Below,                §
     Appellant,                      §   Court Below: Superior Court
                                     §   of the State of Delaware
           v.                        §
                                     §   Cr. ID No. 2010012644A/B (K)
STATE OF DELAWARE,                   §
                                     §
     Appellee.                       §

                        Submitted: October 19, 2022
                        Decided:   January 3, 2023

Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA and TRAYNOR, Justices.

Upon appeal from the Superior Court. AFFIRMED.

Patrick J. Collins, Esquire, COLLINS & PRICE, Wilmington, Delaware, for
Appellant Devin Coleman.

John R. Williams, Esquire, DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Dover,
Delaware, for Appellee State of Delaware.
TRAYNOR, Justice:

         A probation officer seized two guns—one a loaded 9mm Ruger, the other a

.40 caliber Smith & Wesson—from a backpack recently carried by the defendant, a

convicted felon and thus a person prohibited from possessing a firearm. The officer

also seized two .40 caliber magazines—one from within the Smith & Wesson, the

other loose in the backpack. It was later determined that one of the magazines bore

the defendant’s fingerprint but no one knows whether the incriminating prints were

on the magazine that was in the Smith & Wesson firearm or on the loose magazine.

         The defendant asked the trial court to instruct the jury that the officer’s failure

to note, at the time of the seizure, which of the two magazines was in the weapon

constitutes “missing evidence.” Under the defendant’s preferred instruction, which

we often refer to as a Lolly/Deberry1 instruction, the jury would have been told to

assume that, had the officer properly noted the respective positions of the magazines

when he initially seized them, those positions—either inside or outside the Smith &

Wesson—would have tended to prove that the defendant was never in possession of

the Smith & Wesson firearm. The trial court would not give the requested instruction

and this refusal, the defendant argues, constitutes a due process violation warranting

the reversal of his conviction for possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. As

explained below, we disagree and affirm the defendant’s conviction.

1
    Lolly v. State, 611 A.2d 956 (Del. 1992); Deberry v. State, 457 A.2d 744 (Del. 1983).

                                                  2
                                                 I

       In June 2020, Devin Coleman, a convicted felon prohibited from possessing

a firearm, was released on probation after completing an 8-year prison sentence.

Soon after his release, the police began monitoring Coleman’s calls through court-

approved telephone wiretaps, as part of a joint contraband investigation by the City

of Dover Police and the Delaware State Police. At the time, Coleman, a Level III

probationer, lived in Room 117 of the Capitol Inn in Dover.2

       On July 21 and 22, the police listened to Coleman over the wiretap as he

discussed guns and drugs. During the calls on July 21, Coleman expressed a desire

to purchase firearms,3 and, the following day,4 Coleman was recorded telling

associate Antwan Campbell, “I spent $1,700 on guns yesterday.”5

       After Coleman made these incriminating statements, he was observed, on the

morning of July 22, 2020, carrying a blue backpack into his motel room at the

Capitol Inn. A few minutes later, Coleman went outside to take a call from his friend

2
  App. to Opening Br. at A370–71.
3
  During the July 21, 2020 calls, Coleman: (i) spoke with an unknown person who told him about
handguns for sale, (ii) told his eventual codefendant Marquis Mack that he was going to go look
at guns for sale, (iii) told an unknown male that he is going to the place where guns are for sale,
and (iv) discussed with Mack the pricing of the guns and that the seller was coming down from
Wilmington. Id. at A730–37, A739–40, A742–46, A1210.
4
  During the July 22, 2020 calls, Coleman spoke: (i) with an unknown person with whom he
attempted to arrange a contraband drug purchase, (ii) with Kendra Lewis and joked that the
laundromat does not accept “dope” as payment, and (iii) with associate Antwan Campbell who
wanted to purchase a quarter ounce of an unidentified contraband drug and told Campbell that he
spent $1,700 yesterday to purchase guns. Id. at A835–36, A845, A848.
5
  Id. at A1215–17.

                                                3
Kendra Lewis. Lewis, who then arrived by car, was greeted by Coleman and the

two walked back into the motel room together. Shortly after that, probation officer

Ricky Porter and two other officers knocked on the door with the intention of

conducting an administrative search. Hearing the knock, Coleman looked out the

window, and Porter asked him to open the door. Lewis, James Ayers, and Shaketah

Giles were also in the room. Coleman did not open the door immediately.6 Instead,

he turned to Ayers, who was moving things around, and asked him, “Yo, you good?”

and Coleman then opened the door.7

       Once inside, Porter and the officers found drugs containing Fentanyl. Porter

also located the blue backpack that Coleman was seen carrying into the room within

the preceding hour. Inside the blue backpack, Porter found (i) one Ruger handgun

with a loaded 9mm magazine inserted, (ii) one Smith & Wesson with an unloaded

.40 caliber magazine inserted, and (iii) one spare .40 caliber magazine that was

unloaded and loose in the backpack. Porter photographed the items “before handling

the weapons.”8

6
   The parties dispute how much time elapsed before Coleman opened the door. On direct
examination, Porter testified that Coleman opened the door after “an abnormally long time . . . 45
seconds to a minute.” On cross examination, confronted with his investigative report, Porter
testified that he wrote the report on the morning of the search and further testified “I’ve
documented it took Coleman several seconds to open the door[.]” Id. at A881, A925–27, A930.
7
  Id. at A1436.
8
  Id. at A897, A943.

                                                4
      During the evidence collection process, Porter removed the magazines from

the Ruger and the Smith & Wesson and confirmed that neither weapon’s chamber

contained a round. Only the 9mm magazine found in the Ruger contained any

ammunition. When he seized the .40 caliber magazines, both of which were

unloaded and appeared to be “identical,”9 Porter did not designate which magazine

was found in the Smith & Wesson.

      Porter delivered the evidence to the Dover Police Department. The items were

then tagged and separately photographed. Later, Detective Nolan Matthews, a

Dover Police Department crime-scene investigator, lifted three fingerprints from one

of the .40 caliber magazines, an examination of which showed that the prints

belonged to Coleman, Mack, and Ayers. These were the only fingerprints found that

had any identification value.10 Because no effort had been made when seizing the

evidence to differentiate between the two .40 caliber magazines, there was no way

to tell which of the .40 caliber magazines the fingerprints were lifted from—the

magazine found inside the Smith & Wesson or the one that was loose in the

backpack.

9
 Id. at A941–42.
10
   The analysis revealed no visible fingerprints on either the Smith & Wesson or the Ruger.
Fingerprints were found on the 9mm magazine and on one of the bullets in the 9mm magazine,
but none produced any identification value. Id. at A1010–11, A1024.

                                            5
      Based on the wiretap investigation, a Kent County grand jury indicted 29

defendants, including Coleman, on racketeering, drug, and weapons offenses.

Separately, Coleman faced additional charges stemming from the search of his motel

room, including two charges of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited and

one charge of possession of ammunition by a person prohibited. To avoid the

prejudice that might attend the jury’s learning of Coleman’s prior felony conviction

and his status as a “person prohibited,” the court severed the “person prohibited”

charges and held two trials. The same jury heard both cases and much of the

separately presented evidence overlapped. To streamline the trial, the first trial was

limited to one drug dealing (fentanyl) charge; the State entered nolle prosequis as to

eight other charges pending against Coleman. The second trial was limited to two

charges of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited and one count of

possession of ammunition by a person prohibited.

      During the first trial, because Porter could not identify which of the two .40

caliber magazines was in the Smith & Wesson firearm when it was seized,

Coleman’s counsel requested a missing evidence instruction, stating:

       [A]t the time the evidence was out of the control of Mr. Coleman and
       exclusively in the control of the state . . . there was at a minimum
       negligence in handling it. I believe that if there is evidence that could
       potentially have exculpatory value for a defendant and it has been
       mishandled in a negligent fashion . . . that supports grounds for
       allowing for the Lolly-Deberry type of instruction that there was
       evidence, there could have been exculpatory value but because of the
       way it was handled it was no longer there. The jury should be

                                          6
        instructed that if the evidence were stamped and it was handled
        properly that evidence would have been that the fingerprints were
        found on the magazine that was not in the gun. So at this point in
        time I’m making an application for a Lolly type [or] Deberry
        instruction with respect to that issue to be given [in] the jury
        instructions for the gun issue.11

In response, the court agreed to hear further argument after the evidence was

received in the second trial.

       Thereafter, the jury found Coleman guilty of the lesser-included offense of

misdemeanor possession of fentanyl. Then, in the second trial, after the prosecution

rested, the court denied Coleman’s application for a missing evidence instruction

finding no breach of the State’s duty to collect or preserve evidence.

       Coleman then testified in his own defense that he was lying when he told

Campbell that he had spent “$1,700 on guns.”12 According to Coleman, when he

entered the Capitol Inn on the morning of July 22, the blue backpack contained a

pair of sneakers. Coleman opined that Ayers had deposited the guns and spare

magazine into the blue backpack while Coleman was outside talking on the phone

with Lewis in the minutes before the probation officer arrived to conduct the

search.13 He also claimed that he only briefly touched the spare .40 caliber magazine

11
   Id. at A1279–80.
12
   Id. at A1439.
13
    On cross examination, Coleman agreed that his “theory [was] that the guns [went] in the
backpack after [he] [told] [Ayers] to get that stuff out of the room.” Coleman confirmed that he
never saw anybody put anything in the backpack because he was outside at the time in question.
Id. at A1463–64.

                                               7
on the morning of July 22 when he slid the “clip” across the sink to Ayers and told

him to “pick this stuff up.”14

         At the end of the second trial, the jury found Coleman guilty of only one count

of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. Because neither of the counts

charging Coleman with possession of a firearm by a person prohibited describes the

firearm—that is, neither count identifies the type of firearm Coleman was alleged to

have possessed—we do not know whether Coleman was convicted of possessing the

Ruger or the Smith & Wesson firearm.

         Before Coleman’s trials, the State had filed a motion asking the court to

sentence Coleman as a habitual offender under 11 Del. C. §4214(d). The Superior

Court granted the motion at Coleman’s sentencing hearing.              The court then

sentenced Coleman to 29 years of unsuspended Level V time for the possession-of-

a-firearm-by-a-person-prohibited conviction and a fine for the drug-possession

misdemeanor.

                                            II

         In this appeal, Coleman raises a single issue: he contends that the Superior

Court erred by denying his request for a “missing evidence” instruction thereby

depriving him of his right to due process. Although Coleman did not tender a draft

14
     Id. at A1432–33.

                                            8
instruction to the trial court, his reference to Deberry and Lolly and his briefing in

this Court indicate that the jury instruction he favored would have read as follows:

       In this case the court has determined that the State failed to
       collect/preserve certain evidence which was material to the defense.
       The failure of the State to collect/preserve such evidence entitles the
       defendant to an inference that if such evidence were available at trial it
       would be exculpatory. This means that, for purposes of deciding this
       case, you are to assume that the missing evidence, had it been
       collected/preserved, would not have incriminated the defendant and
       would have tended to prove the defendant not guilty. The inference
       does not necessarily establish the defendant’s innocence, however.

       If there is other evidence presented which establishes the fact or
       resolves the issue to which the missing evidence was material, you must
       weigh that evidence along with the inference. Nevertheless, despite the
       inference concerning missing evidence, if you conclude after
       examining all the evidence that the State has proven beyond a
       reasonable doubt all elements of the offense(s) charged, you would be
       justified in returning a verdict of guilty.15

       Based upon our de novo review of the court’s ruling,16 we conclude that,

because the evidence whose absence forms the basis of Coleman’s argument was

not physical evidence subject to production under Superior Court Criminal Rule 16

or Brady v. Maryland,17 the Superior Court’s ruling was not erroneous. In short, the

Lolly/Deberry framework is inapplicable to Coleman’s “missing evidence” claim.

15
   Opening Br. at 28 (quoting Lolly, 611 A.2d at 962 n.6).
16
   See Hendricks v. State, 871 A.2d 1118, 1123 (Del. 2005) (applying de novo review to the denial
of a request to give a “missing evidence” instruction to the jury).
17
   Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).

                                               9
                                               A

       In Deberry v. State, a case involving a rape at knife-point, although there was

testimony that the police had taken Deberry’s clothing as well as the victim’s blood-

stained clothes, the State was unable to produce Deberry’s clothing for testing.18

That Deberry’s clothing had gone missing was problematic because, had Deberry

committed the crimes with which he was charged, “the likelihood of [the victim’s]

blood being found on [Deberry’s] clothing was very strong, given the injuries

sustained by the victim.”19 Conversely, the absence of Deberry’s blood and the

victim’s hair on his clothing “would have been material to the issue of guilt since

the evidence could have created a reasonable doubt not otherwise present.”20 Thus,

Deberry’s clothing “was of obvious relevance.”21

       In response to Deberry’s contention that reversible error occurred when the

State failed to produce or account for the potentially exculpatory evidence, this Court

recognized that the State’s duty to disclose evidence under Superior Court Criminal

Rule 16(b) also includes a duty to preserve that evidence.22 We observed that the

government’s “obligation to preserve evidence is rooted in the due process

18
    This Court believed that there was “little doubt that the State actually had possession of
Deberry’s clothing at one time and then lost or destroyed it[.]” Deberry, 457 A.2d at 749.
19
   Id. at 748.
20
   Id. at 749.
21
   Id. at 748.
22
   Id. at 751–52. See id. (“[U]nder Superior Court Rule 16(b), a defendant need only show that an
item ‘may be material to the preparation of his defense’ to be discoverable.”).

                                               10
provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution and the

Delaware Constitution, article I, section 7.”23 We held further that if the government

fails to preserve important physical evidence, a criminal defendant may be entitled

to an inference that the missing evidence would have been exculpatory.24 To aid in

determining whether the inference is available, Deberry adopted a framework that

examines both the conduct of the State and the nature of the missing evidence:25

         1) would the requested material, if extant in the possession of the
            State at the time of the defense request, have been subject to
            disclosure under Criminal Rule 16 or Brady [v. Maryland, 373
            U.S. 83 (1963)]?
         2) if so, did the government have a duty to preserve the material?

         3) if there was a duty to preserve, was the duty breached, and what
            consequences should flow from a breach?

We explained that, in the final step of the Deberry analysis, to determine what

consequences should flow from a breach of duty, the trial courts should consider

“(1) the degree of negligence or bad faith involved, (2) the importance of the lost

evidence, and (3) the sufficiency of the other evidence adduced at the trial to sustain

23
   Id. at 751–52.
24
   Id. at 753–54 (When vital “physical evidence . . . is lost or otherwise becomes unavailable
through some apparent default of the police, the State bears a heavy burden of overcoming the
defendant’s claim of prejudice. . . . Because the State must bear the responsibility for the loss, and
the defendant therefore enjoys the inference that evidence of the clothing would be exculpatory in
nature, in a retrial the State must stipulate that if Deberry’s clothing was introduced it would not
contain any evidence incriminating him.”).
25
   Id. at 750.

                                                 11
the conviction.”26 “This analysis, of course, assumes that the missing evidence

might be exculpatory, i.e., that [it is] relevant to a disputed issue.”27 We have

maintained, as we held in Deberry, that “[a] claim that potentially exculpatory

evidence was lost or destroyed by the State can only be decided after each element

of the above analysis has been considered.”28

       Six years after Deberry, we decided Hammond v. State,29 a vehicular homicide

case in which the defendant, whose defense hinged in part on his claim that he was

not the driver, argued that the State’s failure to preserve the crash vehicle or to gather

evidence from inside the crash vehicle violated his guaranteed right of access to

evidence.30 Preservation of the crash vehicle was important to Hammond because

evidence of fingerprints, blood, or hair on torn clothing in the interior might have

supported his defense that he was not the driver. The crash vehicle might also have

been tested for mechanical failure, providing an innocent cause of the accident.

Applying Deberry, we concluded that the State breached its duty to preserve

important physical evidence by failing to preserve the crash vehicle itself and that

26
   Id. at 752 (citing United States v. Loud Hawk, 628 F.2d 1139, 1152 (9th Cir. 1979) (Kennedy,
J., concurring)). See Bailey v. State, 521 A.2d 1069, 1091 (Del. 1987) (citing Deberry, 457 A.2d
at 752).
27
   McNair v. State, 990 A.2d 398, 403 n.16 (Del. 2010) (emphasis in original).
28
   Deberry, 457 A.2d at 750.
29
   Hammond v. State, 569 A.2d. 81 (Del. 1999).
30
   Id. at 85.

                                              12
the defendant was entitled to the inference, that if available, the crash vehicle would

have contained exculpatory evidence.31

       In 1992, in Lolly v. State, we extended our holding in Deberry to “claims

involving the alleged failure to gather evidence ab initio.”32 In addition, we held

that the State’s failure to gather or preserve evidence material to the defense entitles

the defendant to an inference that, if such evidence were available at trial, it would

be exculpatory.33 In Lolly, a burglar was apparently injured by a boobytrapped

window; after discovering a trail of blood inside and outside of the apartment, the

police arrested Lolly based on an eyewitness identification and the fact that he was

holding a rag to a bleeding wound on his hand.34 Despite the obvious relevance of

the blood as evidence connecting the defendant to the crime, the State failed to

collect any samples of the blood, even after the defendant told the police that he had

cut his hand earlier in the day.35 In Lolly, we endorsed our rationale in Deberry and

Hammond, adding that the proper emphasis continues to be upon the significance of

31
   Id. at 89–90. See also id. (denial of jury instruction was harmless error).
32
   Lolly, 611 A.2d at 960 (citing Hughes v. State, 490 A.2d 1034, 1049 (Del. 1985)).
33
    Id. at 961 n.6. See Hendricks, 871 A.2d at 1124 (emphasis in original) (“there may be
circumstances when the State failed to [gather or] preserve evidence that was material to the
defense and the defendant would be entitled to a missing evidence instruction but not a dismissal
of the charges.”) (citing Lolly, 611 A.2d at 961–62).
34
   Lolly, 611 A.2d at 958.
35
   Id.

                                               13
the “missing evidence” in the trial setting with appropriate guidance by the trial

judge through jury instruction.36

                                              B

       As the preceding discussion illustrates, the courts’ employment of a

Lolly/Deberry “missing evidence” instruction has been limited to those instances

where potentially exculpatory physical evidence was either not collected by law

enforcement or collected but not preserved during the course of the prosecution. We

have faulted the State for failing to gather or preserve physical evidence material to

a defendant’s guilt or innocence, like clothing worn during an alleged rape,37 a crash

vehicle in a vehicular homicide case,38 blood observed near a boobytrapped

window,39 or clothing concealing firearms that were the basis of criminal charges.40

But in this case the physical evidence—the weapons and magazines—was collected,

preserved, and available at trial. There simply is no “missing evidence” in the sense

that the Lolly/Deberry line of cases addresses. This conclusion is consistent with the

line of cases discussed above, which teach that “[t]he Deberry standard only requires

that the State adequately gather and preserve physical evidence.”41

36
   Id. at 960.
37
   Deberry, 457 A.2d at 753.
38
   Hammond, 569 A.2d at 85.
39
   Lolly, 611 A.2d at 958
40
   Johnson v. State, 27 A.3d 541, 547 (Del. 2011).
41
   Ruffin, 131 A.3d at 308 (emphasis added) (citing Deberry, 457 A.2d at 751–52).

                                              14
         As previously noted, the threshold inquiry under Deberry is whether, had it

been collected, the evidence would have been subject to disclosure under Rule 16.

In conducting this inquiry, the Deberry court confined its review of Rule 16 to

subparagraph (b). Under that subparagraph, as it existed when Deberry was decided,

the State was required, upon the defendant’s request, to produce for inspection,

copying, or photographing “designated books, papers, documents, tangible objects,

buildings or places, copies or portions thereof which are within the possession,

custody or control of the State, upon a showing that the items sought may be material

to the preparation of his defense and that the request is reasonable.”42 Thus, all the

material that is subject to disclosure under former Rule 16(b) was tangible physical

evidence. That the current, identically worded version of Rule 16(b), found in

Superior Court Criminal Rule 16(a)(1)(C), is entitled “Documents and tangible

objects” further reinforces that the Deberry framework addresses missing physical

evidence and not the observations of evidence-collecting law-enforcement officers.

         Coleman’s real complaint is not with the failure to collect or preserve physical

evidence but is, rather, with the probation officer’s evidence-collection methods, that

is, his failure to record the position of the two .40 caliber magazines vis-à-vis the .40

caliber weapon. Coleman cites no authority, nor are we aware of any, that would

42
     See Deberry, 457 A.2d at 750 n.3.

                                            15
support this expansion of the doctrine.43 For this and the other reasons discussed

below, we are not inclined to extend our Lolly/Deberry “missing evidence” doctrine

to the circumstances presented here.

                                               C

       Although Coleman has not explicitly relied on the Lolly/Deberry framework’s

inclusion of a Brady component—that is, whether the “missing evidence,” if extant,

would have been subject to a disclosure under Brady—he does point to the

potentially exculpatory nature of the evidence. Indeed, the assumption underlying

the Lolly/Deberry rationale is that the missing evidence might by exculpatory.44 We

therefore take this opportunity to briefly address Coleman’s implicit Brady

argument.

       Brady is principally concerned with the prosecution’s withholding of evidence

that is favorable to the accused. A Brady violation has three components: “(1)

evidence exists that is favorable to the accused, because it is either exculpatory or

43
   Oral Argument, at 9:14–9:48, Coleman v. State, No. 83, 2022 (Del. argued Oct. 19, 2022),
https://livestream.com/accounts/5969852/events/10612709/videos/233387482/player.       The
following exchange took place:

        The Court: Can you point to any cases where this Court has found a Deberry or
        Lolly violation where the actual physical evidence was collected, preserved, and
        produced, but that evidence was collected in a way where its evidentiary value
        may have been affected?

        Coleman’s Counsel: I have not found one, your Honor. I think this is a unique
        set of facts.
44
   McNair, 990 A.2d at 403 n.16.

                                              16
impeaching; (2) that evidence is suppressed by the state; and (3) its suppression

prejudices the defendant.”45 Brady claims typically involve the withholding of

evidence that is within the government’s possession, custody, or control. 46 Here,

however, Coleman’s claim is that the evidence was never possessed by the State

because the investigating officer should have, but did not, collect the evidence.

         In Powell v. State, this Court addressed a similar claim, although we note that,

like the cases discussed above that applied the Lolly/Deberry framework, Powell

involved the failure to preserve physical evidence. The Court recognized a “broadly

applicable principle” relevant to such claims:

          [F]or the police to have a duty to collect and preserve specific
          evidence, the police must have had a reason, at the time, to believe
          the evidence might be exculpatory. In that regard, . . . “the duty to
          preserve exculpatory evidence does not include a duty to seek out
          exculpatory evidence.”47

         Under Coleman’s argument, if the magazine bearing his fingerprint was inside

the weapon, the likelihood that he possessed the weapon was greater than if it had

been loose in the backpack. Coleman couched this contention in the following

terms:

         If the magazine with his fingerprint was in the weapon, that would have
         been powerful evidence of his guilt[]. The converse is also true. If the

45
   Starling v. State, 882 A.2d 747, 756 (Del. 2003) (citing Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 281–
82 (1999)).
46
   See, e.g., Schaffer v. State, 184 A.3d 841, 2018 WL 1747793, at *3 (Del. Apr. 10, 2018)
(TABLE).
47
   Powell v. State, 49 A.3d 1090, 1101 (Del. 2012) (alteration in original) (quoting Mason v. State,
963 A.2d 139, 2009 WL 189839, at *1 (Del. Jan. 5, 2009) (TABLE)).

                                                17
         magazine with his fingerprint was not the one in the weapon, it is not
         proof that he possessed the weapon.48
It follows, according to Coleman, that evidence that the magazine with the print was

loose in the backpack—had that been the case—would be exculpatory and the

absence of that evidence, which was the consequence of the probation officer’s

negligence, should result in a rebuttable presumption that he possessed neither of the

firearms found in his backpack. Implicit in Coleman’s argument is the assumption

that the jury would not have convicted him, or at least would have been less likely

to convict him, had they known (or were directed to assume) that the magazine

bearing his fingerprint was not found in the Smith & Wesson firearm, but merely in

close proximity and in the backpack with it. This reasoning is, in our view, flawed

in several respects.

         First, by its verdict, the jury appears to have rejected Coleman’s false

dichotomy under which the jury would necessarily convict him if it believed the

magazine with the fingerprint was in the weapon but otherwise would acquit. His

counsel argued the same in his closing argument:

         We don’t know which clip was up in the Smith & Wesson. If that clip
         had the fingerprints of [Coleman] . . . , I would submit to you that it
         would be logical to conclude that, not only had Devin Coleman touched
         that magazine, but he also touched and handled the firearm . . . . But we
         don’t know. It’s a 50-50 chance that that clip, the one with Devin’s
         fingerprint on it, was the one that was lose in the bag.49

48
     Opening Br. at 34.
49
     App. to Opening Br. at A1500–01.

                                            18
Coleman’s counsel then observed that “50-50 [is] a tie,” and that therefore the

prosecution had not proven that Coleman possessed the Smith & Wesson beyond a

reasonable doubt.50 But the jury was not bound to—and apparently did not—adopt

Coleman’s binary view of the significance of the fingerprint evidence. In fact, it is

more likely that the jury weighed the fingerprint evidence as we do. For us, the

relevance of the fingerprint evidence on the .40 caliber magazine is that it tended to

establish that Coleman possessed a .40 caliber handgun. Whether the magazine was

found inside or outside the actual .40 caliber handgun found in the same backpack

does not tip the scales one way or the other. Unlike in Deberry, where the absence

of blood and hair on the missing clothing would have created a reasonable doubt that

Deberry committed the charged crimes, here the presence of Coleman’s fingerprints

on the .40 caliber magazine in close proximity to the weapon in question is hardly

exculpatory even if, standing alone, “it is not proof that [Coleman] possessed the

weapon.”51

          For purposes of our analysis, we have considered Coleman’s best-case

hypothetical scenario and have assumed that the probation officer recorded the

positions of the two .40 caliber magazines at the time of seizure and that the

fingerprint evidence was found on the loose magazine, not in the gun. Would this

50
     Id. at A1501–03.
51
     Opening Br. at 34.

                                         19
make it measurably less likely that the jury would convict Coleman of possessing

the .40 caliber gun? We think not. From our point of view, the fingerprint on the

magazine sitting next to the gun is, for all intents and purposes, and when considered

with the other evidence of possession (i.e., Coleman’s statement of the day before

and the weapon’s presence in Coleman’s backpack) as incriminating as a fingerprint

found on the magazine inside the gun. It follows that the “evidence” upon which

Coleman has constructed his Lolly/Deberry claim is not exculpatory in the sense we

have recognized in our “missing evidence” case law.52

       We have also considered a different scenario in which neither of the .40

caliber magazines bore Coleman’s fingerprints and ask whether, in that hypothetical

event, the evidence of Coleman’s possession of the firearm would be sufficient to

sustain his conviction. In our view, it would be. Viewing the evidence, including

Coleman’s statement the day before that he had purchased guns the day before that

and the presence of two guns in a backpack found in Coleman’s room and in his

backpack, a reasonable juror could find Coleman guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

of possessing one or both guns. It is illogical in our view to conclude that, because

in the actual event, fingerprints were found and those prints might have been on the

52
   This view of the purportedly missing evidence also undermines Coleman’s claim that the
probation officer’s failure to record the original location of the magazines was negligent. Put
differently, we cannot fault the officer’s failure if we ourselves discount the evidentiary relevance
of whether the magazines were inside or outside the gun.

                                                20
loose magazine, the absence of prints on the magazine inside the gun tends to show

he did not possess the gun.

       Coleman’s argument also asks us to assume that the jury credited his self-

serving testimony that purportedly explained away his recorded statement from the

day before that he had “spent $1,700 on guns yesterday” and the presence of his

fingerprint on what he posits was the loose magazine. But this assumption, as we

have explained above, is belied by the jury’s guilty verdict. The jury soundly

rejected Coleman’s claim that he was unable to purchase guns because of lack of

funds. To the contrary, by all appearances, the jury concluded that Coleman

possessed at least one of the two handguns found in his blue backpack—most

probably, the .40 caliber Smith &Wesson,53 given his possession of the unloaded .40

caliber magazine.

       In sum, the evidence that Coleman claims was “missing” at his trial was of

dubious exculpatory value. And to the extent it had any such value, Coleman has

53
  Coleman’s argument assumes that the jury found him guilty of possessing the Smith & Wesson
.40 caliber firearm and not the 9mm Ruger. This premise is based on the jury’s acquittal of
Coleman on the other weapon charge and the ammunition charge. According to Coleman, because
the jury acquitted him on the ammunition charge and the 9mm Ruger was loaded, the guilty verdict
must necessarily be directed to the .40 caliber Smith & Wesson firearm charge. But that is the
type of assumption about a jury’s deliberative framework that this Court has frequently, if not
consistently, eschewed. It should be sufficient to note that, while Coleman posits a reasonable
explanation of the jury’s verdicts under which the conviction relates to the .40 caliber Smith &
Wesson and the acquittal to the 9mm Ruger, that is not the only conceivable explanation. Because
the evidence at trial was, in our view, sufficient to sustain a conviction for possession of either of
the firearms, we are not prepared to conclude that the ammunition-charge acquittal, which could
have been the product of jury lenity, means that the jury could not have convicted Coleman of
possessing the Ruger.

                                                 21
not explained how that would have been apparent to the probation officer upon his

seizure of Coleman’s backpack and his discovery of the weapons and magazines in

it.

                                        III

      Because the “missing evidence” that forms the basis of Coleman’s argument

is not physical evidence subject to disclosure under Rule 16 and was not, in any

event, likely to be exculpatory, Coleman’s Lolly/Deberry claim fails. We, therefore,

affirm the Superior Court’s judgment of conviction.

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