DeJesus v. State

• Citation: 655 A.2d 1180
• Decision Date: 10 January 1995
• Docket Number: No. 308,1993,308
• Parties: Jerry L. DeJESUS, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. . Submitted:
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 1180

655 A.2d 1180

Jerry L. DeJESUS, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

No. 308, 1993.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: Jan. 10, 1995.

Decided: March 7, 1995.

Diane Clarke Streett, Asst. Public Defender, Office of the Public Defender, Wilmington, for appellant.

Timothy J. Donovan, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen., Dept. of Justice, Wilmington, for appellee.

Before VEASEY, C.J., WALSH, HOLLAND, HARTNETT, and BERGER, JJ., constituting the Court En Banc.

WALSH, Justice:

In this appeal from the Superior Court, the defendant-appellant, Jerry DeJesus ("DeJesus"), asserts several claims of error arising from his convictions of criminally negligent homicide, felony murder, attempted first degree robbery, and three counts of possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony. After trial, the Superior Court merged DeJesus' conviction for criminally negligent homicide, and its accompanying weapons conviction, with his felony murder conviction, and its accompanying weapons conviction. DeJesus was then sentenced to life imprisonment for the felony murder conviction and six years imprisonment for his remaining three convictions.

On appeal, DeJesus contests the admissibility of his pretrial statements to the police, the State's ability to establish the corpus delicti of the attempted robbery charge, and several discretionary and evidentiary rulings rendered by the court during trial. We have reviewed DeJesus' claims regarding his pretrial statements and the rulings of the court during trial and find them without merit. However, after a thorough review of the record, we have concluded that the State failed to establish, aliunde the defendant's confession, the corpus delicti of attempted robbery. Because the attempted robbery charge was the predicate felony for DeJesus' felony murder conviction, we conclude that his convictions for both charges must be reversed. We therefore vacate DeJesus' convictions for felony murder, attempted robbery and the two accompanying weapons offenses. We affirm his convictions for criminally negligent homicide and its accompanying weapons offense, and thus remand to the Superior Court for resentencing the convictions of criminally negligent homicide and possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony.

I

At trial the State presented evidence of the following events. Charles Craig ("Craig"), a retired policeman, testified that on November 21, 1991, at approximately 1:30 p.m., while parking his car on the 900 block of Tatnall Street in Wilmington, he observed a blue Honda automobile parked in front of him. He then saw a person he later identified as DeJesus exit the Honda from the passenger side, enter a nearby bank, and return to the car three to five minutes later. The Honda then backed up, stopped abruptly, and began to rock violently, as if the occupants were engaged in a struggle. Although Craig could see arms moving within the car, he could not discern who initiated the altercation because the rear window of the car was fogged over.

At that point, Craig left his vehicle and approached the Honda where he saw the driver of the automobile slumped with his head and torso across the passenger seat. The driver, later identified as Lawrence Robinson ("Robinson"), was bleeding from a neck wound and appeared unconscious. Meanwhile, the passenger, DeJesus, was attempting to climb into the driver's seat, apparently to start the car. Craig then asked the passenger what had happened and DeJesus replied that he had been stabbed. DeJesus then opened the driver's side door and walked to the sidewalk where he sat down and asked for help. Craig noticed that DeJesus was wearing a pair of work gloves over another pair of surgical gloves. DeJesus removed the gloves, examined his stab wound and collapsed on the sidewalk.

The police and paramedics were summoned to the scene shortly thereafter. Officer Gregory Ciotti ("Officer Ciotti") arrived on the scene and saw DeJesus on the sidewalk where he was bleeding and shouting that the driver had stabbed him. ¹ Officer Ciotti rushed Robinson to the hospital in a patrol cruiser. Robinson died at the hospital, where hospital staff found one hundred dollars in his pocket. DeJesus was also taken to the hospital by ambulance and later underwent surgery for a lacerated colon.

During the struggle in the car, DeJesus had been stabbed once in the side of his abdomen. Robinson had been stabbed twice, once in the neck and once in the torso. Inside the Honda, the police found a steak knife and a white powdery substance, which tested negative as an illegal substance. The steak knife appeared to be the sole instrument that caused all three wounds to DeJesus and Robinson. The medical examiner opined that of the two wounds to Robinson, the wound to the neck was inflicted first because it appeared as if it had been partially blocked. This stab wound punctured the internal subclavian artery of the neck, which, according to the medical examiner's estimation, would have incapacitated Robinson within a matter of seconds or minutes. Therefore, he concluded that there was only a one percent chance that Robinson could have received this injury, and then have the strength to disarm and stab his attacker in the abdomen. He surmised that either wound to Robinson, however, would have proven fatal.

DeJesus was hospitalized for one week as a result of his injuries. During the course of his hospitalization, DeJesus made three statements to the police. Two statements were made on the day of the incident. DeJesus first made a statement to Detective Leon Stevenson ("Detective Stevenson"), who was dispatched to the emergency room as part of the police investigation of the incident. When Detective Stevenson arrived at the emergency room, he noticed the medical staff attempting to stabilize DeJesus in preparation for surgery. He knew little about the incident other than that DeJesus had been stabbed. Once DeJesus was stabilized, Detective Stevenson received permission from medical staff to question DeJesus. DeJesus was lying on a hospital gurney and appeared to be in great pain.

Detective Stevenson then identified himself and DeJesus quickly told him that "I got stabbed and stabbed him [Robinson] back." Although DeJesus was not viewed as a suspect of a crime at that time, Detective Stevenson recited to DeJesus the Miranda warnings from memory, albeit he neglected to inform DeJesus of his right to an attorney. Detective Stevenson then asked DeJesus if he wished to speak to him and DeJesus replied that he did.

DeJesus then elaborated on his initial declaration by saying that his friend, Robinson, picked him up that day on his lunch break to take DeJesus to cash his paycheck. After cashing his paycheck at the Wilmington Trust, DeJesus asked Robinson to drive him to another bank on Tatnall Street so that he could meet his friend Hector Hernandez ("Hernandez"). Robinson complied. After failing to locate Hernandez at the bank, DeJesus returned to the car. DeJesus claimed that as soon as he sat in the car, Robinson stabbed him in his abdomen to steal the money DeJesus received from his paycheck. The two men then struggled and DeJesus was able to stab Robinson in the neck and then in the torso. DeJesus then told the detective that he either fell out of the car or someone opened the door and carried him out. After this brief statement, DeJesus was taken into surgery. According to Detective Stevenson, although DeJesus was visibly in pain, he had no difficulty expressing himself.

DeJesus was next questioned by police detectives Martin Donahue ("Detective Donahue") and William Brown ("Detective Brown") while he was in the recovery room following the operation, about six hours after the stabbings occurred. The detectives did not give DeJesus Miranda warnings because DeJesus was viewed as a crime victim rather than a suspect based on his statement to Detective Stevenson. After receiving permission from a hospital surgeon, the detectives interviewed DeJesus. Upon asking a few preliminary questions, the detectives believed that DeJesus was conscious and coherent enough to give another statement regarding the stabbings.

Elaborating on his first statement, DeJesus told the detectives the following: he called Robinson the previous night to pick him up from work on his lunch break because DeJesus' car was not running properly. That afternoon, the men went to the Wilmington Trust on Market Street where DeJesus cashed his paycheck for $160.00. Robinson then drove DeJesus to his mother's house, where DeJesus paid his mother $60 in rent. DeJesus then told Robinson that he would take Robinson out to lunch if he would drive him to the bank on Tatnall Street to meet his friend Hernandez. He told the detectives that he had lunch plans with Hernandez so that they could discuss Hernandez's upcoming marriage. During the ride to the bank, Robinson told DeJesus that he had half an ounce of marijuana and a "quarter" of cocaine in the car. Robinson then drove to Tatnall Street where DeJesus looked for Hernandez. Robinson remained in the car. When he could not find Hernandez, DeJesus came back to the Honda and Robinson immediately stabbed him. The two men struggled, and DeJesus was able to gain partial control of the knife to stab Robinson twice. DeJesus also stated that, during the struggle, Robinson was able to remove one hundred dollars from DeJesus' pocket.

Five days later, DeJesus requested that Detectives Donahue and Brown return to the hospital. The detectives arrived at around 6:20 p.m. and saw that DeJesus had two visitors in his hospital room. The detectives did not administer Miranda warnings to him at that time. DeJesus then made a third statement which was somewhat inconsistent with his prior statements to the police.

During this statement, DeJesus told the detectives the following: during his lunch break he drove his own car to the...