Court Opinion

ID: 9733042
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:51:04.354063+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:37.928370
License: Public Domain

DUFFY, Justice
(dissenting and concurring) :
I dissent from that part of the Court’s opinion which affirms defendant’s conviction under 11 Del.C.' § 468A for possession of firearms during the commission of a felony. In all other respects I concur in the opinion.
There is no dispute about the facts. Defendant stood trial under four separate counts, three of which are included in a twelve-count indictment (Cr.A. No. 1403, 1972). One of 'those counts charged, him with possession of a “narcotic drug with intent to. sell, to wit: Heroin.” Another count in the same indictment charged him with possession of firearms “during the commission of a felony, to wit: Possession *620of a Narcotic drug with Intent to Sell . to wit: Heroin, . . .”* The fourth charge on which defendant was tried (Cr.A. No. 925, 1973) was for “possession of narcotic drug with intent to sell, to wit: Cocaine.”
It is thus clear that the firearms charge related only to the possession of heroin, not to possession of cocaine. But the Court charged the jury as follows :
“Both charges of possession of heroin and possession of cocaine with intent to sell are felonies. If you find the defendant guilty of either of these charges, you may then consider the charge of possession of a fir'earm -during the commission of a felony. However, if you find the defendant not guilty of both the charge of possession of heroin and the charge of possession of cocaine with intent to sell, you should not consider the charge of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Under that instruction the jury was permitted to find defendant guilty of possession of firearms if it convicted him on the cocaine .count, on which the weapons charge was not based. In brief, the jury was permitted to convict defendant of a charge for which he was neither indicted nor noticed, nor tried. And since it may well have taken up' that judge-given option to convict (and for present purposes we must assume that it did), the error was surely not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt when a thirty-year sentence was the result.
It is no answer to say that an indictment charging defendant with possession of a narcotic drug with intent to sell would' have been sufficient without identification of the drug, or to say that proof of possession of cocaine with intent to sell would have supported an indictment for possession with intent to sell heroin. Those issues are simply not in the case. The fact is that defendant was put on trial on three counts out of a dozen contained in one indictment and on the single count contained in a separate indictment. As a matter of law he was entitled to know before trial what charges the State expected to prove and for which he would be sentenced if convicted.
I would reverse and remand for a new trial the conviction for possession of firearms during the commission of a felony.

 Another count, in the same indictment, on which defendant stood trial, charged violation of 11 Del.C. § 468B: possession of firearms by a person having been convicted of a felony.