Lilly v. State
| Decision Date | 13 September 1994 |
| Docket Number | 1993,No. 120,120 |
| Parties | Earl Dean LILLY, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. . Submitted: |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Delaware |
Upon appeal from the Superior Court. AFFIRMED.
Louis B. Ferrara, Aerenson, Ferrara & Lyons, Wilmington, for appellant.
Gary A. Myers (argued), Dept. of Justice, Georgetown, and William L. George, Jr., Dept. of Justice, Wilmington, for appellee.
Before VEASEY, C.J., WALSH, HOLLAND, HARTNETT, and BERGER, JJ. (constituting the Court en Banc )
Following a jury trial in the Superior Court, the defendant-appellant, Earl Dean Lilly ("Lilly"), was convicted of Murder in the Second Degree. Lilly's motion for a new trial was denied. This is Lilly's direct appeal.
Lilly raises three claims of error in this appeal. First, he contends the Superior Court erred in not declaring a mistrial because the State did not produce the transcribed statements of several witnesses until the date of trial. Second, he contends the Superior Court made several erroneous evidentiary rulings. Third, he contends the Superior Court erred by not instructing the jury on the lesser-included offense of Vehicular Homicide.
We find Lilly's first two contentions without merit. Although Lilly's third contention is legally correct, the record reflects that the error in instructing the jury was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the judgments of the Superior Court are affirmed.
Patricia Motter ("Motter") was driving her car on the night of May 17, 1991, when she was involved in a collision. The collision occurred at approximately 11:00 p.m. on a concrete bridge on Otts Chapel Road. The bridge was located between the Otts Chapel Road intersection and the entrance to the Sandy Brae Industrial Park.
At the same place and time, Lilly was driving on Otts Chapel Road. He had been drinking and was travelling at a high rate of speed. Lilly lost control of his vehicle on the bridge. Two witnesses saw Lilly's vehicle strike the concrete bridge wall, but neither saw the Motter and Lilly vehicles collide.
Police from the City of Newark arrived at the scene by 11:12 p.m. They found Motter's vehicle resting against the concrete bridge wall. Motter and Lilly were taken to the Christiana Hospital. Motter was pronounced dead-on-arrival at the hospital. It was determined that Lilly's blood alcohol content was .11.
The police took four witnesses, Stephen Brzozowski, Grace Szafranski, Karen Lutte, and Jessica Brown, to the Newark Police Station. The witnesses gave recorded statements concerning their observations that night.
Brzozowski and Szafranski recounted that they had been in a motor vehicle at the entrance to the Sandy Brae Industrial Park, waiting to turn right onto Otts Chapel Road. Lilly's vehicle and a second vehicle passed in front of them travelling northbound, towards the bridge, at high speeds. Brzozowski and Szafranski arrived on the bridge soon after the cars passed. There, they observed the damaged Lilly and Motter vehicles at rest. They did not see the cars collide.
At the same time, approaching the bridge southbound were witnesses Brown and Lutte. According to Lutte, she saw the Lilly vehicle jump the median, spin and collide with the bridge wall. Lutte stated that she never saw the Lilly vehicle strike any other car. Brown also gave a recorded statement that coincided with Lutte's statement in all respects.
The State charged Lilly with Murder in the Second Degree, alleging that he:
did recklessly and under circumstances manifesti[n]g a cruel, wicked and depraved indifference to human life cause the death of Patricia A. Motter, by driving while under the influence of alcohol and at a high rate of speed and as a result he lost control of his automobile and collided headon [sic] with the automobile driven by Patricia A. Motter. (emphasis added).
After indictment and before trial, the State provided Lilly's defense counsel with a copy of the Newark Police report, which erroneously summarized the observations of Lutte and Brown as follows: "Lutte and Brown were traveling [east-bound] and were able to see vehicle # 2 [the Motter vehicle] at the time of the accident."
At trial, the State called witnesses Brzozowski, Szafranski, Lutte and Brown. Their May 18, 1991 statements were provided to defense counsel on the morning of trial, May 18, 1992. The testimony of all four witnesses was consistent with their May 18, 1991 statements.
The State presented witnesses who testified that they saw Lilly speeding in the town of St. Georges not long before the collision with Motter. One witness stopped Lilly in St. Georges, saw that Lilly had been drinking, and tried unsuccessfully to have Lilly surrender his car keys. Another witness called "911" to report Lilly's erratic driving in and around St. Georges.
Lilly left St. Georges with a friend, Tyrone Johnson, as a passenger. Johnson was riding with Lilly at the time of the collision with Motter. Lilly also testified that after picking up Johnson in St. Georges, he continued to drink beer. Lilly testified that he was probably driving 75 or 80 miles per hour when he approached the curve before the concrete bridge where the collision occurred. At trial, Lilly also acknowledged that several years ago, he had attended classes concerning the dangers of drinking and driving.
The State also offered the testimony of two accident reconstruction experts at trial. The experts were Corporal Theodore Ryser of the Newark Police Department and Corporal Joseph A. Maichle of the New Castle County Police Department. The State's experts opined that Lilly lost control of his vehicle, jumped the median and struck the Motter vehicle head-on, in Motter's lane, as she entered the bridge from the direction opposite to Lilly.
"Brady Material "
Lilly's first argument is that the State violated its obligation under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) ("Brady "). The Brady doctrine requires disclosure of "evidence that is both favorable to the accused and 'material either to guilt or to punishment.' " United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 674, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 3379, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985) (quoting Brady, 373 U.S. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1197). Thus, when a violation of the Brady rule is alleged, two questions must be addressed: Michael v. State, Del.Supr., 529 A.2d 752, 755 (1987).
According to Lilly, the prosecutor violated Brady by waiting until the day of trial to provide defense counsel with transcripts of the recorded statements the police obtained soon after the accident. When the witnesses' statements were produced, Lilly's attorney moved for a mistrial, arguing the State should have disclosed the statements earlier.
Lilly asserts on appeal that the recorded statements contained favorable evidence. The State's failure to disclose the statements until the morning of the first day of trial, Lilly submits, prevented him from developing an alternative reconstruction of the accident to counter the State's head-on collision theory. According to Lilly, the police report "misled" his expert into believing that Lutte and Brown had seen the Lilly and Motter cars collide.
Lilly also contends that the statement of Stephen Brzozowski provided favorable evidence. According to Brzozowski, two vehicles approached the bridge from the same direction, not opposite directions. Lilly submits this statement would tend to contradict the State's theory of a head-on collision. Thus, Lilly claims that Brzozowski's statement should also have been disclosed earlier.
In addressing Lilly's alleged Brady violation, it must first be determined if the statements of the witnesses were, in fact, favorable. If so, this Court must then consider the question of materiality. If the information was both favorable and material, we must assess whether the delayed disclosure precluded Lilly's effective use of the information at trial.
The record reflects that the witnesses' trial testimony was consistent with their transcribed statements, rather than the police report. Brown and Lutte confirmed they had not observed the Lilly and Motter cars collide. Both women also testified, consistent with their recorded statements, that they had not seen Motter's car pass in front of them prior to the accident.
The Superior Court decided Lilly's Brady argument on several independent alternative grounds. The trial judge noted that although no witness saw the Lilly and Motter vehicles actually collide, and Brzozowski testified that a car followed Lilly's vehicle onto the bridge, that evidence did not "suggest in any way that this mysterious car, rather than [Lilly's] car, was in fact the one that struck [Motter's] car." The Superior Court also ruled that the witnesses' statements did not "have any bearing on the other facts of the case, including the fact that [Lilly] was travelling in excess of 100 miles per hour--more than 60 miles above the speed limit--when he struck [Motter's] car." The record supports the Superior Court's conclusion that the witnesses' statements did not provide favorable evidence on the issue of Lilly's guilt or innocence.
The determination that the witnesses' statements were not favorable, as that term is used in Brady, obviated the Superior Court's need to determine whether the evidence was material to Lilly's case. However, in ruling on Lilly's motion for a new trial, the Superior Court assumed, arguendo, that the statements did provide favorable evidence. It then concluded that the delayed disclosure did not result in a Brady violation.
"[R]egardless of the nature of the Brady violation, the test for determining the materiality of the nondisclosed matters is the same." Michael v....
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