Ray v. State
| Decision Date | 01 July 2022 |
| Docket Number | 197, 2021 |
| Citation | 280 A.3d 627 |
| Parties | Reuel RAY, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Delaware |
280 A.3d 627
Reuel RAY, Defendant Below, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Delaware, Appellee.
No. 197, 2021
Supreme Court of Delaware.
Submitted: April 6, 2022
Decided: July 1, 2022
Benjamin S. Gifford IV, Esquire, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellant Reuel Ray.
Matthew C. Bloom, Esquire, DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellee State of Delaware.
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA, VAUGHN, TRAYNOR, and MONTGOMERY-REEVES, Justices, constituting the Court en banc.
TRAYNOR, Justice, for the Majority:
On May 21, 2012, at approximately 7:30 p.m., Craig Melancon was felled by three gun shots, one from a .22 caliber firearm and the two others from what appeared to be a .38 caliber revolver. An hour later, Melancon was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The shooting occurred outside the home of a friend, who found Melancon lying on the ground and struggling for his life. The friend, Anthony Coursey, and another bystander, Marla Johnson, saw two hooded individuals running from the scene. Coursey later identified one of the fleeing men as Reuel Ray.
Ray was charged with, and ultimately convicted of, felony murder, attempted robbery, and related crimes, for which he received a life sentence plus 20 years. He
appealed those convictions to this Court, claiming that the trial court erred by: (1) not granting a mistrial after a juror expressed concerns for her safety, and (2) not providing the jury with certain cautionary instructions, neither of which Ray requested, following the denial of Ray's mistrial request. In July 2017, this Court affirmed Ray's convictions.
Soon after that, Ray moved for postconviction relief under Superior Court Criminal Rule 61 and, in due course, his appointed counsel filed an amended Rule 61 motion. In his amended motion, Ray claimed that he was entitled to an evidentiary hearing and postconviction relief for three reasons. First, he argued that the State's failure to disclose that, approximately one month before Ray's trial, it had dismissed a criminal charge then pending against a key prosecution witness violated his due process rights under Brady v. Maryland .1 Had Ray been armed with knowledge of this dismissal, he believes that it is reasonably probable that he could have demonstrated the witness's bias and gained an acquittal. Next, Ray claimed that his trial counsel's inadequate pretrial investigation, which failed to uncover the witness's pending charge and its eventual dismissal, constituted ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of Ray's right to counsel and due process. Finally, Ray asserted that his counsel failed to provide effective representation at trial and on appeal by allowing an obviously flawed jury instruction on the elements of felony murder to guide the jury's deliberations.
The Superior Court rejected each of Ray's arguments and denied the amended Rule 61 motion.2 In his appeal to this Court, Ray has abandoned his claim that his trial counsel mounted a constitutionally ineffective investigation but maintains his Brady claim and his ineffective-assistance claim as it relates to the court's felony-murder instruction.
In this opinion, we conclude that the Superior Court's erroneous felony-murder instruction—an instruction that, by everyone's lights, does not embody an accurate statement of the law—and Ray's counsel's failure to object or to raise the error on direct appeal warrant the entry of postconviction relief in the form of a new trial on the felony-murder charge and the related firearm charge. We reject, however, Ray's contention that the State's Brady violation justifies relief as to all his convictions. Because those convictions were not influenced by the flawed felony-murder instruction and are supported by abundant evidence independent of the putatively biased witness's testimony, we remain confident in them.
I
A
During the afternoon of May 21, 2012, Ray had a phone conversation with his brother Richard, who was detained at Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in default of $50,000 secured bail. Ray told his brother that if he could "hit a lick," that is, commit a robbery, he "could put that money up" for Richard's bail.3 A few minutes before 9:00 that evening—about an hour and a half after Melancon was shot and killed—the Ray brothers had a follow-up conversation on the phone. Ray then reported to Richard that he tried "to
hit a lick," but it didn't work out as planned.4 According to Ray, "[i]t just happened. You are going to read about it tomorrow. He got checked out."5 According to the prosecution, the first of these conversations describes the Rays’ hatching of a plan to commit robbery, and the second describes how that plan went awry and devolved into the murder of Craig Melancon. This translation of Ray's slang was supported by the testimony of the detective in charge of the homicide investigation.6
Perhaps the most damning trial testimony came from Tyare Lee, Ray's co-defendant. Lee, who was 21 years old at the time of trial and Ray's friend since elementary school, had pleaded guilty a year earlier to an array of crimes, including second degree murder, for his role in Craig Melancon's murder.7 Because of those guilty pleas, Lee was facing a possible sentence of life plus 77 years in prison, with a minimum mandatory prison sentence of 24 years.
Lee explained how he and Ray had encountered Melancon at a basketball court in the Southbridge section of Wilmington during the afternoon of May 21. Lee was carrying a .22 revolver in his waistband, while Ray was carrying a .38 revolver. Lee asked Melancon, who was known to sell marijuana for Anthony Coursey, if he might purchase some that day. Melancon then walked, along with Lee, Ray, a female, and a child, in the direction of Coursey's residence on Townsend Place. Melancon parted company with the others and was next seen by Lee coming out of Coursey's front doorway. Right before that, Ray had told Lee that he intended to "get" Melancon, meaning he planned to rob him.8
As Melancon approached, Lee and Ray pulled out their guns, and Ray told Melancon not to move. Lee described what happened next: "[Melancon] was standing in front of us, and he went to reach -- I guess he was going into his pocket or something[.] I had a reflex. I pulled the trigger ... [and] the gun went off."9 In Lee's telling, Melancon did not fall after Lee's shot, but he turned around "facing away" from Lee and Ray.10 Lee recalled that he started to run and as he ran, Ray fired his gun at Melancon "[a]bout four or five times."11 Lee believed that Ray's shots hit Melancon, because he fell after the second round of shots. After Ray shot his gun, he turned and ran, following Lee.
Ray and Lee parted ways, and, soon after that, Lee flagged down a friend—Barry Miller—who was in his car heading to another section of Wilmington. Lee asked Miller for a ride to his residence, which was in the same general direction as Miller's destination. As the two proceeded out of Southbridge, they encountered Brandon Tann, who was riding a bicycle. Tann also hitched a ride with Miller, who
testified that Tann appeared "scared" and possibly armed.12 Miller dropped off Lee and Tann at their respective Wilmington residences, Lee first and then Tann. During this drive, Miller was unaware of the shooting of Melancon in Southbridge.
Lee did not speak again with Ray that day but ran into him the next day. In the following days, Ray helped Lee sell his .22 revolver. Lee also knew that Ray had sold his .38 revolver to Darren Lamotte.
Lamotte did not testify at Ray's trial, but the parties stipulated that, during the second week of June, Lee and Ray approached Lamotte and asked him if he wanted to purchase a gun for $400. In due course, Lee and Ray went to Lamotte's residence at 433 South Claymont Street and, "[w]hile in Lamotte's bedroom, Ray pulled a revolver handgun from his person and laid it on the bed."13 Lamotte then took possession of the gun in exchange for $400. A couple weeks later, Lee and Ray asked Lamotte to return the gun, but he refused.
Other witnesses filled in details that were missing from Tyare Lee's account. For instance, the female who walked from the basketball court in the direction of Coursey's residence—Marla Johnson—recounted that she was at the court with her four-year-old grandson. Melancon, who had been dating Johnson's daughter, and two men wearing black hooded sweatshirts—"[o]ne ... short and stubby" and the other "thinner [and] taller"—were also there.14 Ray is 5’7" tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds, while Lee stands 6-feet tall and weighs 145 pounds. The two unidentified men chatted with Melancon and then, as Lee described, walked away from the court on Townsend Place.
Johnson and her grandson eventually parted ways with the three men. She went toward her residence, while the other three headed in the direction of Coursey's house. Johnson was at her house for "about a good five minutes"15 when, as she was making a sandwich for her grandson, she heard four gunshots. She ran outside, finding Melancon lying on the ground, "clenching ... the grass ..., just really trying to hold onto life ...."16 Johnson also saw the two previously described hooded men running away from the scene. Although Johnson did not identify either of the two men, she did confirm that they were the same two men who had walked with her, her grandson, and Melancon from the park.
Anthony Coursey confirmed that Melancon visited his house on Townsend Place in Southbridge shortly before the shooting. While Melancon was there, Coursey noticed Lee peeking from behind a nearby house as if he was "up to something."17 After that, Coursey ordered a pizza, and, about ten minutes later, Melancon left the house. As the pizza was being delivered to Coursey at the back of his house, he heard five shots, causing him to run to the front of the house, from which he could then see Melancon on the ground. Coursey noticed that, while his friends and...
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