Purnell v. State
| Decision Date | 17 June 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 113, 2020,113, 2020 |
| Citation | 254 A.3d 1053 |
| Parties | Mark PURNELL, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Delaware |
Herbert W. Mondros, Esquire, Rigrodsky Law, P.A., Wilmington, Delaware, Tiffani D. Hurst, Esquire (argued), Hurst Legal Services, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for Appellant.
Carolyn S. Hake, Esquire, Delaware Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware for Appellee.
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA, VAUGHN, TRAYNOR, and MONTGOMERY-REEVES, Justices, constituting the Court en Banc.
Introduction
On January 30, 2006, two armed assailants fatally shot Tameka Giles in the back at the corner of Fifth and Willing Streets in Wilmington after a botched robbery attempt while she was walking with her husband. A nearby eyewitness identified one assailant from a photo array as Ronald Harris. The victim's husband identified Kellee Mitchell as the shooter in another array.
During the investigation, police located a .38-caliber revolver hidden in ceiling tiles outside the apartment Kellee Mitchell was staying at in Compton Towers. With Mitchell in the apartment was Dawan Harris, Ronald's older brother to whom he bears a striking resemblance. Dawan Harris admitted that the gun belonged to both Mitchell and himself and pleaded guilty to a weapons charge.
In January 2007, after his arrest on drug charges, an individual named Corey Hammond implicated Mark Purnell and Ronald Harris as Tameka Giles's killers based on statements they made earlier in the day, and in the week following the killing. Later that month, Kellee Mitchell also told police that Mark Purnell bragged about having committed the murder. Thereafter, Purnell and Ronald Harris were arrested and charged.
Across multiple lengthy police interrogations in the two years following the murder, Ronald Harris had repeatedly told police of his significant learning disabilities and that he knew nothing about the crime and had not been involved. But on the eve of trial and after jury selection, the State offered a plea agreement dropping the murder and weapons charges and recommending a three-year sentence in exchange for his plea and testimony. Ronald Harris accepted and entered a guilty plea.
At the April 2008 Superior Court trial, the State's case for proving that Purnell was one of the two perpetrators consisted almost entirely of the claims made by Corey Hammond and Kellee Mitchell, combined with the "accomplice" testimony of Ronald Harris pursuant to his plea.
Purnell's court-appointed trial attorney was the same advocate who represented Dawan Harris in the weapons prosecution earlier in the murder investigation. The trial judge did not permit him to withdraw when he brought the conflict, and the defense theory that his former client might be the true killer, to the State's and court's attention. Trial counsel failed to investigate evidentiary leads implicating Dawan Harris, did not call him as a witness, and failed to present even then-known or obvious evidence and argument to the jury that would have inculpated his former client. Following this constrained defense, the jury convicted Purnell of Murder Second Degree and all other charges after more than a day of deliberation. The Superior Court sentenced him to forty-five years of unsuspended Level V incarceration. In 2009, based on the narrow issues presented to us, which did not include the conflict, we upheld his conviction and sentence.
Following the denial of his direct appeal, Purnell filed a 133-page handwritten pro se Rule 61 motion raising ten grounds for relief, of which the first was an objection to his trial counsel's conflict of interest. After he obtained representation, postconviction counsel filed an amended motion asserting only three grounds and did not include the conflict claim. The Superior Court denied Purnell's motion and, again without having the conflict brought to our attention, we affirmed that denial in 2014.
Because postconviction counsel died a few weeks prior to oral argument before us in 2014, we will likely never know why he did not include the conflict issue in the amended motion. Due to that omission, the conflict claim comes to us now as one of Purnell's grounds in an untimely, successive Rule 61 motion.
To qualify for an exception to Rule 61's procedural bars against untimely, successive motions, Purnell must identify with particularity new evidence that creates a strong inference that he is actually innocent in fact of the acts underlying the charges. Stated differently, Purnell must present additional evidence that was not available at trial and would not have been despite his exercise of due diligence. Purnell must also convince us that the new evidence, when considered in the context of all the relevant evidence by a properly instructed jury, is such as will probably change the result if a new trial were granted. In this extraordinary case, we find that he has made just such a showing.
We do not fault the Superior Court for ruling as it did. It carefully considered the issues before it. But this case presents novel legal issues embedded in an unusual factual background. We have never before found a case to qualify for the "actual innocence" exception. Thus, the Superior Court had little guidance on when evidence is "new" or what showing creates a "strong inference" of innocence. Much of the evidence Purnell presents, though knowable or even known at the time, was unavailable to him at trial because his counsel was not permitted to withdraw and was precluded from obtaining or presenting it due to his ethical duties to his former client.
Ordinarily, having clarified the standards for newness and persuasiveness necessary for relief, we would remand the matter to the Superior Court for an evidentiary hearing and a decision guided by those rulings. But because Purnell has spent more than fourteen years in prison for murder based on a manifestly unfair trial and conviction, and based on his new evidence, viewed as a part of the entire evidentiary record, we are convinced that in this extraordinary case remand for an evidentiary hearing would serve no useful purpose. Instead, we reverse and remand for a new trial.
On January 21, 2006, Mark Purnell ("Purnell") was admitted to Christiana Hospital with a gunshot wound to his right leg.1 He was shot in the lower thigh, and the bullet continued down to the back of his knee, coming to rest around the knee joint. The following day, Purnell underwent surgery to remove the bullet, for which he was placed under general anesthesia
.
The surgical team, led by vascular surgeon Dr. Harad, attempted to remove the bullet from the back of Purnell's knee. During the surgery, Dr. Harad discovered that the bullet had moved from the back of Purnell's knee to the front, and after approximately a half hour to 45 minutes, he was unable to remove the bullet from that angle. A second practitioner, orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Rubano ("Dr. Rubano"), continued the attempts to remove the bullet via an arthroscopic procedure
from the front. This involved making three incisions on the front of Purnell's knee and, at various times, putting a camera in one incision to look around while manipulating the tissue through another incision seeking to find the bullet. Eventually, Dr. Rubano was able to locate and remove the bullet in this manner. The three incisions in the front of Purnell's knee were closed with centimeter-long sutures, while the longer incision in the back of his knee was closed with approximately ten staples.
The following day, January 23rd, Dr. Rubano examined Purnell's knee and verified that his blood flow was normal and that the nerves were working. At his discharge, Purnell told the physical therapist that he was unable to use crutches and needed a wheelchair. Purnell did not cooperate with physical therapy or follow-up care. Purnell's sutures and staples were removed in the beginning of February when he was in a juvenile detention facility.
Seven days following Purnell's discharge from the hospital, on the evening of January 30, 2006, Angela Rayne ("Rayne"), high on crack cocaine, was sitting on her outside step a couple of feet from the intersection of Fifth Street and Willing Street. She saw two young black men pass her, double back, and then cross paths with a couple, later identified as Ernest Giles ("Mr. Giles") and his wife Tameka Giles ("Mrs. Giles"). The Gileses were carrying shopping bags. Rayne heard a single gunshot, causing her to look in that direction immediately.2 She saw the two young men flee, running, and saw Mrs. Giles lying on the ground with Mr. Giles calling for help.
Rayne recognized one of the two assailants from earlier in the day, when she had seen him with Wilmington Police at Fifth and Jefferson Streets. Based on that information, the police suspected Ronald Harris. Police also located a 9mm shell casing 40 feet north of the intersection of Fifth and Willing Streets.3
At a police interview on February 16, 2006, Rayne identified Ronald Harris from a photo lineup and confirmed that he was present at the robbery at the time of the fatal shot.4 Other than noting that the second assailant was shorter, Rayne said that she did not get a good look at him and would be unable to identify him.5 In a photo lineup array containing six photographs, including Purnell's, conducted in January 2007, a year after the incident, Rayne did not identify Purnell as the second assailant but instead identified two of the other individuals in the photographs as having eyes similar to those of the second assailant.
Detectives Gary Tabor ("Detective Tabor") and Andrew Brock of the Wilmington Police Department interviewed Mr. Giles late in the evening of February 2, 2006, beginning after 11:00 p.m.6 By that time, they had...
To continue reading
Request your trial