Wallace v. State, 229, 2007.

CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Delaware
Citation956 A.2d 630
Docket NumberNo. 229, 2007.,229, 2007.
PartiesChristopher WALLACE, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.
Decision Date01 August 2008

Court Below — Superior Court of the State of Delaware, in and for New Castle County, Cr. ID. 0511021501.

Upon appeal from the Superior Court. AFFIRMED.

Edmund M. Hillis, Esquire (argued) and Lisa A. Minutola, Esquire, Office of the Public Defender, Wilmington, DE, for appellant.

Paul R. Wallace, Esquire, Chief of Appeals Division, Department of Justice, Wilmington, DE, for appellee.

Before HOLLAND, JACOBS and RIDGELY, Justices.

HOLLAND, Justice:

The defendant, Christopher Wallace ("the defendant" or "Wallace"), was indicted by a grand jury on one count of Murder in the First Degree (intentional homicide) and one count of Possession of a Deadly Weapon During the Commission of a Felony. Wallace waived his constitutional right to a trial by jury. Both the State and the defendant consented to having the issue of guilt or innocence decided after a bench trial.

The trial occurred over a period of six days during which the Superior Court received testimony from twelve witnesses and admitted seventy three exhibits into evidence. The trial judge found Wallace "guilty but mentally ill" of Murder in the First Degree and Possession of a Deadly Weapon During the Commission of a Felony. Section 4209 of Title 11 establishes that, in cases not subject to the death penalty, the sentence for Murder in the First Degree is life imprisonment without probation, parole or any other reduction.

The only question presented in this direct appeal is whether the imposition of a sentence of life without parole upon a defendant who, at the age of 15-3/4 years, killed his nine-year-old cousin is constitutionally disproportionate because that sentence violated either Article I, section 11 of the Delaware Constitution or the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We have concluded that Wallace's life sentence did not violate the Eighth Amendment and that his claim under the Delaware Constitution is waived. Therefore, the judgment and sentence of the Superior Court must be affirmed.

Facts1

On November 27, 2005, nine-year-old Daniel Schlor, spoke into a video camera at a family gathering and stated that among the five things he most hated were number 1, "people that try to make me drunk" and number 5, "murderers." When he made those statements, Daniel was sitting on his grandmother's lap in the kitchen of his home. He was there that evening with his mother, Gloria Schlor, and two of his aunts.

Approximately thirty-six hours later, on the morning of November 29, 2005, Daniel's mother found him dead, covered in a blanket, lying face down on the floor of her basement recreation room. On November 30, 2005, Doctor Adrienne Sekula-Perlman, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, performed an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of Daniel's death. The results were disconcerting when compared to Daniel's video taped statements recorded shortly before his murder: he had been strangled, stabbed and apparently forced to consume alcohol as he died. The trial judge found beyond a reasonable doubt that the perpetrator of Daniel's brutal death was his 15-3/4 year-old cousin, Christopher Wallace.

Wallace was born on January 17, 1990, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He moved to Tennessee, then to Kentucky, and eventually settled in Florida with his mother, father and older brother. The evidence revealed a less than typical childhood.

Wallace, accompanied by his mother and other relatives, traveled to Wilmington, Delaware to visit with Mrs. Wallace's cousin, Gloria Schlor, and her family for the Thanksgiving holiday. They arrived in Wilmington on November 9, 2005, left the Schlor home to visit relatives in Long Island, New York, returned to Wilmington on the Monday before Thanksgiving, and stayed in Wilmington through the holiday.

The Schlor family consisted of Gloria Schlor, her boyfriend Wayne, her twin daughters, and her son Daniel, then nine years old. Mrs. Schlor, Wayne and the two girls slept upstairs. Daniel slept in a finished bedroom located in the basement of the home, adjacent to a finished recreation room. When the Wallace family visited, the adults slept upstairs and Wallace slept mainly on the floor in the basement recreation room.

All witnesses reported that Wallace was quite pleasant to be around while visiting the Schlor home. He did not display unusual behavior or violent tendencies toward anyone in the home, including Daniel. A video of Wallace interacting with two of the Schlor children (the twin girls) appears to bear this out. By all accounts, Wallace and Daniel got along fine and seemed to enjoy each other's company.

According to Gloria Schlor, on the morning of November 29, 2005, at approximately 1:00 a.m., Wallace's mother and his aunt left Delaware by pickup truck en route to Louisiana. There was no room in the truck for Wallace so his mother bought him an airline ticket to travel alone back to Florida the next day. Witnesses report that Daniel Schlor went to bed late on the evening of November 28 or early morning on November 29. Wallace was last seen going down to the basement, presumably for bed, around 2:00 a.m. on November 29. On the morning of November 29, 2005, at approximately 7:45 a.m., Mrs. Schlor went to get Daniel ready for school and found him lying dead on the floor of the recreation room in the basement, the victim of a violent knife attack.

Wallace was nowhere to be found. Police and paramedics responded to the Schlor home and a search for Wallace was commenced immediately thereafter. He was apprehended by the New Castle County Police at approximately 6:30 p.m. on November 29 after having been missing from the Schlor home all day. Wallace apparently had attempted to drive away in one of the Schlor vehicles but could not find the key to start the vehicle on a key ring he had taken from the kitchen. He then walked from the Schlor home to a concealed area near an office complex a few miles away, stayed there for several hours, and then moved on to a nearby gas station where he sat and waited to be apprehended.

The officers who took Wallace into custody noted that he was cooperative, calm and did not appear to be engaged in delusional behavior. Even though he was placed face down on the ground and handcuffed, there was no indication that he was agitated or slipping into a psychotic state in response to this arguably threatening behavior by police. During the transport back to the New Castle County police station, Wallace made several incriminating statements while in the police vehicle, including: "I know I'm going to jail for a long time for this one" and a statement to the effect that his "MP3 player would be out of date by the time he got out of prison." He inquired how much jail time he was facing, asked about the officer's bullet proof vest, and asked whether he would be on the television show "COPS." He asked the officer to find some heavy metal music on the car radio, and specifically requested that the officer try to find some "Slayer," a heavy metal band.

At the New Castle County police station, Wallace filled out the pedigree paperwork without difficulty. At 8:03 p.m., Detectives Sczerba and Crowley entered the interview room where Wallace had been waiting. Wallace agreed to speak to the police.2 He was read his Miranda rights and then signed the "Miranda Warning Form" after initialing each portion of the form as it was explained to him. Once the form was signed, Detective Sczerba left the interview room and Detective Crowley conducted the interview.

For the next twenty minutes or so, Detective Crowley and Wallace had a frank but pleasant discussion about several topics, including Wallace's experiences at school, his enjoyment of fighting, his family, his visit to Delaware and, eventually, the fact that he had killed his nine year old cousin in the basement of the Schlor home because his cousin had insulted and angered him.3 While viewing the DVD recording of this interview, the trial judge was struck by the defendant's remarkably poised and confident demeanor. He did not appear upset or shaken. Nor did he appear indecisive, confused or delusional. To the contrary, he was congenial in his demeanor and directly responsive to the police officer's inquiries. There were no eyewitnesses to the crimes. Nevertheless, from the evidence — particularly Wallace's own statements to the police, the testimony of the Assistant Medical Examiner, Dr. Adrienne Sekula-Perlman, and the physical evidence — the trial judge made factual findings as to how Wallace killed Daniel Schlor. The evidence revealed that Wallace inflicted three knife wounds upon Daniel Schlor's back (two of which were "superficial," i.e., where the knife was drawn across the back, and one of which was a stab wound, i.e., where the knife was plunged upwardly into the body through the back and into the spleen and lung). These wounds were inflicted while Daniel Schlor was on his knees facing Wallace.

There was a knife-inflicted stab/incised wound at the back of Daniel Schlor's head. There were also several incised knife wounds around his neck (indicating that the knife was drawn across the neck), including one that was quite large (approximately 3 ½ inches), and a stab wound. Daniel Schlor's hands revealed defensive wounds in the form of scratches and abrasions. The knife wounds were inflicted near the end of a prolonged attack and by two different weapons, one with a non serrated edge and one with a serrated edge. There were no "signatures" left at the crime scene, meaning that Wallace did not inscribe any messages in the physical location of the attack or on the body of his victim, or leave any other markers that would suggest why he committed the crime.

According to Dr. Sekula-Perlman, Daniel Schlor was held down and strangled prior...

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1 books & journal articles
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