Introduction

Below is a case that was presented before the supreme court of Delaware before the chief justice
Seitz and justices Valihura, Vaughn, Traynor and Montgomery-Reeves. The plaintiff, Eric C
Llyod had appealed to the court presenting errors in the judgement that the superior court had
made while ruling his case. The errors included failure to separate his case from that of his co-
defendant, denial of his mistrial due to misidentification motion, admitting gun evidence and rap
videos as part of the evidence yet they were only found in his co-defendant’s house, using his
attorney’s former secretary as a witness and imposing consecutive trials on him thus leading to
thirty years in jail without the possibility of early release. The plaintiff in this case was the state
government which had sued Llyod for selling cocaine and heroin. After listening to the case, the
supreme court affirmed the judgement by the superior court by providing reasons why the trial
court had taken the approach that it did concerning the issue.
A detailed summary of the case
The case is an appeal by Eric Llyod who was convicted by a Superior court Jury for thirty years
without any possibility of early release. Eric Llyod had been convicted of six felonies involving
his involvement in a Wilmington drug dealing enterprise. His appeal challenges the conviction
and the sentence. Firstly, Llyod contends that the court was wrong when it failed to allow his
case to be treated differently from that of his co-defendant Dwayne White. His second argument
was that the court erred since it denied his motion of mistrial after an eyewitness misidentified
Llyod for the man gunman. In the third and the fourth argument, Llyod argued that the trial court
should not have admitted gun evidence simply because of a gun that was found at his co-
defendant house and rap videos that had been created by other enterprise members. Fifthly,
Llyod argued that the trial court made a mistake by allowing his former attorney’s secretary to
testify against him about a drug transaction. Lastly, Llyod contended that the court has violated
his rights under the eighth amendment for imposing consecutive sentences on him thus resulting
into thirty years of incarceration without the option being released earlier. However, the supreme
court affirmed the judgment of the superior case.

An explanation of the issue before the court

According to records, Llyod has been a leader of an enterprise whose members sold large
amounts of cocaine and heroine in Wilmington since 2015. Llyod, being the leader of the
enterprise had enlisted members to be distributing drugs for him. One of the people he
distributed the drugs through, William Wisher claimed that Llyod used to meet him at an agreed
point and then give him the drugs so that he could go look for the market after turning the
cocaine into crack cocaine. After selling the crack cocaine, Wisher would then keep his part of
the profit as had been agreed at the beginning and he would give the rest to Llyod. To conceal
the kind of business that he was doing, Llyod used real estate, gambling and betting to make the
transactions this help him hide his identity as drug dealer. Sykes, another member of the
enterprise also confessed that Wisher used to sell drugs through him and mentioned that Llyod
advised him to use first time house owners to purchase real estates as his way of concealing his
business in selling drugs.

Court ruling and definition

Llyod’s first argument is that the superior court denied his motion of separation of his case from
that of his co-defendant Dwayne White on the grounds of rule 14 which allows the superior court
to join two cases together if the two defendants are alleged to have participated in the same series
of crime or their offenses are related unless the justice wants to treat the two cases as two
different ones. Therefore, since these two cases were somehow related, the supreme court ruled
that the superior court did not make any mistake by failing to separate the two. According to the
jury, the trial court has the right to decide if it will treat the cases differently or not and thus the
motion is an invalid argument that Llyod was presenting which indicted that by refusing to
separate the two cases, the court was being unjust to him.
Another argument that Llyod presented in the that the witness had misidentified him thus this
was a mistrial. However, the court also discredited this argument by saying that the
misidentification was not even so prejudicial to warrant a mistrial. Although Potts might make
some problems when it come to misidentification, he named Boop as the person that approached
him. Pictures by some detectives also helped the jury conclude that Boop, commonly known as
Dwayne White thus it was concluded that Potts did not misled the jury in any way possible. The
state had quite a strong case against Llyod and even if he tried to make a motion that this was a
non-trial, since he could be linked with money as there was so much evidence suggesting that
Llyod was directly linked to the enterprise through emails. The state experts had explained how
Llyod used to hide his identity through making real estate investments this everyone believed
that
Llyod had made an argument that the superior court was wrong for allowing, Llyod’s former
attorney’s secretary to testify against him. However, the superior court did not find a mistake
with this since it allowed the testimony under the present sense impression exception to the
hearsay rule. 87. Although the secretary’s statement is unclear and could not be characterized as
a clear description of the events that proved Llyod was guilty of the crime that he had been
accused of, the supreme court ruled that any errors in the statement were harmless since the
statement was enough to prove that the secretary had witnessed sine sort of illegal transactions
which suggested that Llyod was indeed involved in drug trafficking. The secretary’s claims were
also affirmed by Sykes which proved that they were right hence the court affirmed the superior
court’s decision.

For the argument that Llyod made that the superior court should not have used gun evidence for his
case since it was found in his co-defendant’s apartment thus it was not relevant to his case in any way.
However, the court argued that guns were a proof of the existence of illegal business within the
premises hence it was useful evidence against him that had to be used in the trial. According to the
court, the usefulness of the evidence outweighed the claims that this was an unfair prejudice or was a
confusion of the case at hand thus misleading the jury. The presence of fire arms only confirmed the
existence of the drug dealing enterprise since the two go hand in hand thus this was evidence that
affirmed Llyod’s involvement in the drug dealing business. Llyod also argued that using the rap videos
found at his co-defendant’s house as evidence against him was a mistake but the court dismissed his
argument since the videos were evidence that suggested his involvement in a gang that dealt with
selling drugs. The superior court did not err by using the evidence and thus Llyod’s claims were
dismissed. Llyod also presented an argument before the court which suggested that the trial court
should not have used his attorney’s former secretary as a witness. I agree with the supreme court’s
ruling on this that this was a necessary witness since her statement was useful in helping to incriminate
Llyod more thus the superior court did not make any mistake by allowing her to be a witness.

Another argument that Llyod presented before the court which the supreme court dismissed was that
the trial court had exploited his human rights under the eighth amendment by charging him with
consecutive cases thus, he ended up getting 30 years in prison without the possibility of early release.
The supreme court found no error with this decision by the superior court since the law allowed this to
happen if the crimes were somehow related and since the crimes that Llyod had committed were all
related to his drug dealing business, then there was no mistake and violation of human rights when the
court charged him with all of these crimes at the same time.

Your position/ opinion on the case and its outcome supported by facts
The supreme court affirmed the ruling by the superior court and I agree with the judge son the
decisions that they made. Llyod’s first argument as proved by the supreme court was an invalid
one since the law allows the trial court to treat two cases that are connected as one hence the
court did not make any mistake by refusing to separate his case from that of white. Had Llyod
offered any evidence that suggested that by refusing two separate the two cases the court was
being unjust to him, I would have disagreed with the court’s ruling but since there was no
injustice by refusing to separate the cases, the court was right to deny him this motion.
I agree with the court for dismissing Llyod’s argument of the superior court refusal to treat his
case as a mistrial as there would have been misidentification. This was not a valid argument
since even the other witnesses had testified that he had been involved in drug dealing thus the
case could not be regarded as a mistrial just because there was a possibility one witness had
misidentified him. The use of the gun and the videos found in the co-defendant’s house was also
a necessary part of the evidence since the two proved his relation to the drug trafficking gang.
Llyod’s argument that the court violated his rights by charging him with consecutive charges was
also invalid since the court is allowed to file consecutive charges against an individual if all of
the charges are related which was the case for Llyod’s case which means that the jury’s decision
to afform the judgement by the trial court were right.
Implications of the court’s ruling on business and individuals
The court’s ruling had several implications on Llyod’s illegal business as well as himself as an
individual. The business was brought to an end with the person in charge of it in prison since
there was no one else to distribute the drugs to members of the enterprise so that they would sell
it to other people. If the business was not brought to an end and someone continued to manage
the business even with Llyod in prison, the business must have shrunk significantly since the
police were already aware of the dug trafficking enterprise thus it was easy for the individuals to
be arrested. With the illegal business brought to an end, there was also a decrease in the supply
of cocaine and heroin since the main distributor of the drugs was in prison yet he was the main
avenue of the drugs that were being distributed in the town. With a decrease in the supply of
drugs, the community was safer since it meant that individuals would not have easy access to
drugs thus more people especially youths would not be involved in the abuse of drugs, something
beneficial to the community. As a person, Llyod would lose a lot of property since his drug
selling business would fail once he is in prison and also his other properties would not be
managed well.

Conclusion
Llyod’s case is an instance of a business case and how the court handles business cases. Llyod’s
case was an illegal business and even after the trial court declared him guilty and sentenced him
in prison for thirty years without the possibility of release, he goes to an appellate court so that
his case can be listened to again. Nonetheless, the jury of the supreme court afforms the
decisions hat were made by the trial court and finds no errors in the arguments that Llyod had
presented to the court as the errors that were made when the jury in the trial court was sentencing
hm. Therefore, he is jailed for thirty years without the possibility of early release hence this is a
win for the plaintiff, the state government of Delawere.