Reyes v. State

315 A.3d 475

Corey S. REYES, Defendant Below, Appellant,

v.STATE of Delaware, Appellee.

C.A. No. 232, 2023

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: January 17, 2024

Decided: April 8, 2024

Court Below—Superior Court of the State of Delaware, Cr. ID No. 2208005427

Upon appeal from the Superior Court of the State of Delaware. AFFIRMED.

Elliot Margules, Office of Defense Services, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellant Corey S. Reyes.

John R. Williams, Delaware Department of Justice, Dover, Delaware, for Appellee State of Delaware.

Before SEITZ, Chief Justice, LEGROW and GRIFFITHS, Justices.

GRIFFITHS, Justice:

This appeal stems from an altercation between appellant Corey Reyes and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Deems, and his subsequent arrest, both of which happened) in the span of a few hours on August 10, 2022. After a three-day trial, Reyes was found guilty of second-degree assault, as well as resisting arrest with force or violence and disorderly conduct. Reyes raises two issues on appeal. First, he argues that an amendment to his indictment was one of substance and thus impermissible. Second, he argues that the prosecution made statements that rise to the level of prosecutorial misconduct such that they affected the integrity of the trial process and his substantive rights.

We find that the amendment to Reyes’s indictment during trial was one of form rather than substance, and we therefore AFFIRM his conviction of resisting arrest with force or violence. We also find that any error arising from the prosecutor’s misconduct was harmless. Although certain comments were improper, they were not illustrative of a pattern of repetitive misconduct over multiple trials, and we therefore AFFIRM Reyes’s conviction of second-degree assault.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND¹

The events leading to Corey Reyes’s eventual indictment took place on August 10, 2022 in Dover, Delaware. That day, Reyes and Deems were hanging out with friends around his sister’s house.² Deems’s and Reyes’s accounts at trial about the events of the day diverged almost immediately.

Deems testified that the pair got into an argument, and Reyes told Deems to go back to their shared rental home.³ Reyes testified that Deems showed up to drop off some cigarettes, she stayed for ten or fifteen minutes, and he then told her to leave due to police activity in the area that day.⁴ Deems stated that the pair continued to argue.⁵ Reyes testified that the two had an argument about Deems not cooking dinner, and he told her that "if you’re not going to cook, then I’m going to find someone else to cook."⁶ Deems testified that the argument continued to escalate and "it turned into that he was going to be bringing another female into [her] house" and she "told him that wasn’t happening."⁷ She eventually left the house with her three-year-old son to pick up cigarettes.⁸

When Deems returned to their home, she parked on a side street in the hopes of being able to run in and out of the house to grab diapers for her son without being seen.⁹ She left her son in the car with the intention of going into the house only briefly.¹⁰ Deems testified that she walked inside, heard footsteps, and that Reyes blocked the doorway.¹¹ She then described how Reyes proceeded to harm her:

Well, I was put in a headlock. Also thrown over the back of my couch and fell off of that[,] which had then caused me [to] fall[ ] down on top of my leg and him falling down on top of me. I had still tried to fight him off. … [W]hile trying to get away, I wound up getting my shirt and bra ripped off of me. Then eventually I gave up. I couldn’t fight anymore.¹²

She told the jury that Reyes put her in a headlock—during which she could not breathe for three seconds—and that she kept screaming that "the baby was in the car" and to let her go get him.¹³ She testified that during the time she was trying to fight him off, she "was being pulled by [her] hair" and was "dragged around."¹⁴

Deems also told the jury how she injured her leg when she was trying to get out of the house:

I had tried to run for the front door and he had grabbed me and I flipped backwards over the couch and rolled over because it’s in front of the front door. … The second time I had hit the floor, I heard [the bottom half of my leg] snap.¹⁵

She told the jury that Reyes was trying to make her sit up and was telling her that her leg was not broken.¹⁶ She also testified that she could not stand up by herself and that Reyes eventually forced her to sit up on the couch while he went outside to get Deems’s son out of the car.¹⁷ When she sat up, she said that she could see her "bone sticking up from [her] leg."¹⁸ She stated that she "kicked into survival mode and [ ] tried to escape" by running out of the house.¹⁹ When she realized she could not run on her leg, she "basically threw [her]self off the front step into the grass and army crawled over" to her neighbor Alicia Carter’s house.²⁰ She testified that when she got to Carter’s house, she "started screaming and banging on her door telling her to call the cops."²¹

Reyes, for his part, recalled the altercation differently. He testified that Deems came storming into the house looking for a woman and burst through the front door.²² He testified that he was the only person in the house.²³ He told the jury that Deems tried to get past him to go farther inside, and that, in an effort to block her from doing so, he pushed her but did not shove her.²⁴ Eventually, he picked her up in order to sit her down on the couch to prevent her from damaging anything in the house:

So this would be the third time that she didn’t try to like slide through me, go around me, under me. Every which way you could try to imagine, she tried to do. So this time, with my forearm like this [ ], and I’m standing in front of [her], I kind of picked [her] up like a baby. … [b]y the waist and I walked with her. It was no pick-up, it was like a walk. And I set her down. I said, "Can you stop trying to mess up-- f-up my couch." And she wouldn’t listen.²⁵

Reyes stated that Deems continued to be irate about the possibility of another woman in the house, and that after he set her down on the couch she came right back at him.²⁶ He denied dragging her around by her hair, falling on top of her, or choking her.²⁷

Reyes also testified that Deems came at him again and "[t]hat’s when [he] did the same move, but this time she fell out, like dead, like an alligator spin type and sat on the ground. She didn’t want [him] to pick her up and put her back."²⁸ He said Deems was able to get back up and that she proceeded to tell him that her son was in the car.²⁹ At that point, he said he went outside to go get him, and when he got her son settled in the house, he went back outside after hearing a loud noise.³⁰ Reyes testified that he saw Deems next door, shirtless and crawling.³¹ He said that Deems was telling him to leave her alone and that she didn’t say anything about her leg.³²

Alicia Carter, Reyes’s neighbor, testified that she heard Deems sobbing on her porch and saying that her leg was broken.³³ She opened her door and gave Deems a shirt.³⁴ Carter recalled that Deems asked her to call the police, which she declined to do.³⁵ Carter told the jury that Reyes then came outside and told her not to believe what Deems was telling her because Deems was making it up and was on drugs.³⁶ Deems testified that Reyes told Carter that she was "a coked out crazy white girl."³⁷ Carter offered to drive her to the emergency room, and she ended up taking Deems to Kent General Hospital.³⁸ Deems told Carter that Reyes broke her leg.³⁹ When Carter returned home, Reyes told her that he did not do anything to Deems.⁴⁰

That evening, Officer Siobhan Burton of the Dover Police Department was dispatched to Kent General Hospital after "receiv[ing] a call from a nurse that there was an assault that happened that appeared to be domestic related."⁴¹ Upon entering Deems’s hospital room, Burton testified that Deems was "hysterical[ly] crying, very upset," that her body "was tense," and that Deems was saying she was in pain and that her leg hurt.⁴² She stated that Deems told her that she had gotten into a "verbal argument" with Reyes that "kind of escalated into a physical argument which occurred inside of [Deems’s] residence."⁴³ Burton also told the jury that Deems told her that Reyes had choked her and threatened to kill her.⁴⁴ Burton observed that Deems’s neck "was red and had scratches on it" and that "her left leg was swollen."⁴⁵ The emergency room doctor who treated Deems, Dr. Robert Baeder, testified that he noticed an "obvious injury" to Deems’s leg.⁴⁶

Shortly after returning to the police station, Burton determined that she was going to arrest Reyes and returned to his home that evening with additional offi- cers—Samuel Seibert, Chase Strickland, Max Alderson, Jake Shepherd, and Officer Guiteras—to assist with the arrest.⁴⁷ She testified that the Dover Police Department’s common practice is to bring backup when effecting an arrest.⁴⁸ Here, Burton decided to bring the number of officers that she did—-six including herself—because of the nature of the alleged altercation, Reyes’s size (he is 6’11"), the fact that he was in a home with multiple entrances and exits, and her lack of knowledge as to whether other people or a firearm were inside the residence.⁴⁹

Officer Burton arrived at the house in uniform and in a fully-marked Dover Police Department vehicle.⁵⁰ Once there, she and the other officers discussed how they would position themselves to attempt Reyes’s arrest safely.⁵¹ Burton testified that she knocked on the door, identified herself as a police officer, and asked for Corey.⁵² He did not come outside despite repeated requests from the officers.⁵³ Reyes told the jury that he could not hear the officers speaking to him from inside his home because the television was on and other people were talking inside the house, including some of his family members.⁵⁴

Officer...