Opinion
No. 16, 2002
Submitted: May 21, 2002
Decided: June 7, 2002
Court Below: Superior Court of the State of Delaware in and for New Castle County Cr. ID. No. 0011013269.
Affirmed.
Unpublished opinion is below.
CHARLES W. HAMM, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE OF DELAWARE, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. No. 16, 2002 In the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware. Submitted: May 21, 2002 Decided: June 7, 2002Before VEASEY, Chief Justice, WALSH and STEELE, Justices.
MYRON T. STEELE, Justice.
ORDER
This 7th day of June 2002, on consideration of the briefs of the parties, it appears to the Court that:
1) In September 2001, a Superior Court jury convicted Appellant Charles W. Hamm of Burglary in the Second Degree and Theft. On October 22, 2001, the State moved to declare Hamm a habitual offender pursuant to Del. C. Ann. tit. 11 Del. C. § 4214(b). The trial judge granted the motion and sentenced Hamm to a life sentence at supervision Level V for the burglary conviction and thirty-one days at supervision Level V for the theft conviction. This is Hamm's direct appeal.
2) On August 28, 2000, Karon Masado returned to her house in Wilmington after work and discovered that several items, including jewelry, had been taken from her house. Masado testified that upon entering her house she noticed several items out of their normal place and her pet dogs acting in an agitated manner. Investigating further, she found her closet to be "a mess." After finding the contents of at least one cardboard storage box in her closet empty, she called the police.
3) Officer Roger Cresto of the Wilmington Police Evidence Detection Unit testified that he discovered latent fingerprints on the top and bottom of one of the cardboard boxes in the closet. Officer Joseph Sammons of the Wilmington Police Identification Unit then matched those fingerprints with the known prints of the Charles Hamm. At trial, Officer Sammons testified that he was completely certain that the prints on the box matched those of Charles Hamm. He could not say, however, based on his comparison of Hamm's prints and those at the scene of the crime, when the fingerprints had been left on the cardboard box. No other direct evidence linked Hamm to the burglary.
4) Appellant claims that fingerprint evidence alone is insufficient for the State to meet its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. He cites our decision in Monroe v. State to support his position. In Monroe, the State charged the defendant with burglarizing an appliance store. The only evidence linking Monroe to the crime was a latent fingerprint found on a shard of glass at the point of entry, which was on the public side of the front door. We held that "the range of abundant, innocent explanations for the presence of Monroe's prints on the plexiglass shards [was] too vast for any `rational trier of fact' to have found beyond a reasonable doubt an essential element of both charged offenses — namely, identity."
652 A.2d 560 (Del. 1995).
Id. at 567.
5) The case before us is readily distinguishable on the facts. In Monroe we noted that fingerprint evidence might be enough to sustain a conviction when the circumstances surrounding their presence create a "strong inference" that the defendant was the perpetrator. Among our primary inquiries in determining if this strong inference exists are whether the prints were found in a public or private structure and whether the defendant had special access to the object or the area in which it was found. In this instance, there is no evidence in the record that Hamm ever had access to either Masado's residence or the cardboard box in question.
Id. at 564. 4
Thus, unlike Monroe, there is no abundance of innocent explanations on the presence of Hamm's fingerprints of the box in Masado's residence. Indeed the evidence in the record leads to the strong inference that Hamm was, in fact, the perpetrator. Consequently, there is no merit to Hamm's argument.
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior Court be, and hereby is, AFFIRMED.