Delaware Supreme Court Overturns Third Death Sentence in Two Years Due to Prosecutorial Misconduct

For the third time in two years, the Delaware Supreme Court has reversed the con­vic­tion of a death row inmate because his tri­al was taint­ed by prosecutorial misconduct. 

On December 14, the court ordered a retri­al for Chauncey Starling, who was con­vict­ed in 2003 of killing two peo­ple in a Wilmington bar­ber shop, in part because pros­e­cu­tors had failed to dis­close that they had dropped charges against a key wit­ness for vio­lat­ing his parole. Instead, pros­e­cu­tors informed defense coun­sel that those charges were still pending. 

Earlier this year, the court over­turned the con­vic­tion of Isaiah McCoy because of mis­con­duct by a deputy attor­ney gen­er­al, who was lat­er sus­pend­ed from prac­tic­ing law as a result of sev­en eth­i­cal vio­la­tions in the case. In 2014, Jermaine Wright was grant­ed a new tri­al because pros­e­cu­tors and police with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence about pos­si­ble alter­nate sus­pects in a case in which no foren­sic or eye­wit­ness evi­dence linked Wright to the crime. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Starling to the bar­ber­shop mur­ders, as well. 

The court ruled that the mis­con­duct, in com­bi­na­tion with two prej­u­di­cial fail­ures by defense coun­sel, had denied Starling a fair tri­al. The court wrote, ​“Like all cit­i­zens, [Starling] is enti­tled to a fair tri­al that adheres to the pro­ce­dur­al require­ments with effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Because those pro­ce­dur­al require­ments were not met, and coun­sel defend­ing him was inef­fec­tive, we are com­pelled to reverse and remand for a new tri­al and pro­ceed­ings not incon­sis­tent with this opinion.” 

The court found that coun­sel had been inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to inform the jury that a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness who tes­ti­fied to hav­ing seen Starling at the shoot­ing had pre­vi­ous­ly been shown a pic­ture of Starling in the news­pa­per and had said that Starling did not look like the shooter. 

The court also said that coun­sel should have chal­lenged the pros­e­cu­tion’s use of a state­ment by Starling’s broth­er’s that Starling had alleged­ly said he was sor­ry for what he had done. The court indi­cat­ed that the cir­cum­stances in which the state­ment had been giv­en sug­gest­ed coer­cion, not­ing that the broth­er had been sur­prised at his work­place by a ​“hall­way full of cops” who detained him for 5 or 6 hours at the police sta­tion, inter­ro­gat­ed him with­out read­ing him his Miranda rights, did not allow him to make any phone calls, and threat­ened him with pros­e­cu­tion until he gave the statement.