Mills v. State
| Decision Date | 14 January 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 303, 2018,303, 2018 |
| Parties | Rydell MILLS, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Delaware |
Bernard J. O'Donnell, Esquire, Office of Public Defender, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellant, Rydell Mills.
Maria T. Knoll, Esquire, Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellee, State of Delaware.
Before STRINE, Chief Justice; SEITZ and TRAYNOR, Justices.
The defendant below, Rydell Mills, appeals from his convictions and sentencing order in the Superior Court for various offenses, including cocaine and heroin drug dealing and two counts of resisting arrest with force or violence. These convictions arise out of a single incident in which two police officers caught Mills in a dark alley with a digital scale in his hands, Mills resisted the two officers' arrest, and the police ultimately found a substantial amount of cocaine and smaller amount of heroin nearby.
This appeal presents three issues. Each of the first two issues involves a claim by Mills that he was improperly subjected to multiple convictions or sentences for one offense, under either double jeopardy principles or Delaware's statutory codification of those principles, which essentially comes down to a question of legislative intent. First, Mills contests the fact that he was convicted of two counts of resisting arrest with force or violence, both deriving from the attempt of two police officers working together to arrest him. Mills argues that when a defendant resists the attempt of multiple officers to arrest him, the multiplicity doctrine prohibits the State from dividing the resisting arrest offense into separate counts for each officer, as occurred in this case. Second, Mills argues that his separate convictions for resisting arrest with force or violence and heroin drug dealing cannot stand because the State used the resisting arrest offense as an aggravating factor to elevate the drug dealing offense to a higher felony grade. Mills contends that under 11 Del. C. § 206, which is essentially a statutory codification of the Blockburger1 test, the State cannot use a separate offense as an aggravating element of a higher-grade crime and then have the defendant convicted of both that separate offense and that other higher-grade crime.
As to the first issue, we hold that convicting a defendant of separate counts of resisting arrest with force or violence based solely on the number of arresting officers violates the multiplicity doctrine drawn from the Double Jeopardy Clauses of the United States and Delaware Constitutions. In light of the relevant statutory language, the resisting arrest offense's place in the overall statutory scheme, its apparent purpose, case law from other jurisdictions, and the inequitable results that would follow from allowing multiple convictions based solely on the number of arresting officers, we conclude that the General Assembly intended for the unit of prosecution for resisting arrest with force or violence to be the arrest itself, not the arresting officer whose arrest the defendant resists. In short, we find that the General Assembly intended it to be one count per arrest, not one count per officer. It was therefore multiplicitous to convict Mills twice when the charges arose solely from two officers' joint attempt to arrest him at the same time and place.
As to the second issue, we hold that a defendant can be sentenced for both resisting arrest with force or violence and aggravated drug dealing, even when the resisting arrest offense is a necessary aggravating factor for the drug dealing conviction. Here too, we base our decision on the General Assembly's intent as to these two offenses. The legislative history of the drug dealing statute shows that the General Assembly intended to allow separate convictions for not just drug dealing, but any separate offense that acts to aggravate the level of the drug dealing charge. In other words, the General Assembly intended the drug dealing statute to work like the felony murder statute, where the defendant can be convicted of both felony murder and the felony that elevated the homicide to felony murder.
The third and final issue on appeal deals with an allegedly deficient jury instruction. Here, Mills argues that the trial court erred by omitting from its jury instruction for heroin drug dealing the required element that he intended to deliver the heroin. As to this last issue, we hold that this omission was plain error. Although it is regrettable that defense counsel missed the mistake below, this omission of a critical element of the drug dealing offense is glaring and fundamental enough to require reversal even under a plain error standard of review, especially given that the omission was prejudicial under the circumstances of this case.
We therefore affirm in part and reverse in part the defendant's convictions, vacate his sentence, and remand to the Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
At approximately 11:30 p.m. on August 17, 2017, two Wilmington Police Department officers, Corporals Donald Palmatary and Robert DiRocco, went to the area of a residence in Wilmington in response to an anonymous call that requested that the police check out the backyard. Entering the alley behind the block, both officers drew their handguns and used the flashlights attached to their guns to illuminate the dark alley. As they exited the alley into the backyard, Officer Palmatary saw a man, later identified as Mills, near the steps at the back of the house. Mills saw the officer and said he "was just taking a piss."3 Officer Palmatary then ordered Mills to show his hands and, when Mills did so, saw a digital scale in his hands.
As Officer Palmatary was re-holstering his weapon to detain Mills, Mills took off and tried to charge past the officer to the exit of the alley. Both Officers Palmatary and DiRocco tried to grab Mills, but he escaped their grasp. Officer Palmatary then called for backup and ordered Mills to stop resisting as he and Officer DiRocco took him to the ground again. Mills got back to his feet, continued to struggle, and was again taken to the ground by the officers. Flailing his arms and elbows as he tried to break free, Mills struck Officer DiRocco with an elbow. When backup arrived, Mills and the officers were almost through the alley onto the street. Officer Palmatary grabbed Mills's legs as Officer DiRocco grabbed one of Mills's hands and, with the assistance of other officers who arrived as backup, secured Mills's arms behind his back and handcuffed him. As a result of this incident, Officer DiRocco sustained abrasions and a sprained foot.
In searching the area, the police found various packages of cocaine and heroin, crack cocaine on the ground where Mills was initially standing, three cell phones, four digital scales, and other paraphernalia. In total, the police recovered about 41 grams of cocaine and 0.5 grams of heroin in packaging. The police also got a warrant to search one of the cell phones belonging to Mills, and found text messages suggestive of drug sales.
After being arrested, Mills was indicted for aggravated possession of cocaine, cocaine drug dealing, heroin drug dealing, possession of drug paraphernalia, felony resisting arrest by force or violence (two counts), second-degree assault, and loitering. The State nolle prossed the second-degree assault offense before trial. After a three-day trial in February 2018, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all of the pending offenses except aggravated possession of cocaine, for which the jury could not reach a unanimous agreement on at that time. The State entered a nolle prosequi on the aggravated possession of cocaine charge.
On March 1, 2018, the State filed a motion to declare Mills a habitual offender as to his two convictions for resisting arrest with force or violence.4 On June 1, 2018, the Superior Court granted the State's motion and sentenced him to an aggregate of 44 years and six months at Level V incarceration, suspended after 20 years for decreasing levels of supervision.
Mills timely appealed from the Superior Court's sentencing order.
On appeal, Mills claims that the Superior Court erred in three ways. The first two issues each involve an argument by Mills that he was improperly subjected to multiple convictions or sentences for one offense. As to the first issue, Mills argues that the Superior Court improperly sentenced him twice for resisting arrest with force or violence, which Mills casts as a violation of the multiplicity doctrine arising from the Double Jeopardy Clauses of the United States and Delaware Constitutions because the charges arose out of a single incident and course of conduct. As to the second issue, Mills contends that the trial court erred by sentencing him for both resisting arrest with force or violence and heroin drug dealing because the former was an included offense of the latter under 11 Del. C. § 206, which is essentially Delaware's codification of the test laid out by the United States Supreme Court in Blockburger v. United States5 to determine whether two offenses are the same for double jeopardy purposes. The last issue, which involves an allegedly deficient jury instruction, falls into a different category. Here, Mills argues that the trial court erred by omitting from its jury instruction for heroin drug dealing the required element that he intended to deliver the heroin. Regrettably, Mills did not raise any of these issues below and denied our Superior Court an opportunity to address them in the first instance.
Because Mills did not present any of his claims on appeal to the court below, we review for plain error.6 Under this standard, the error "must be so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize...
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