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Hardin v. State3/11/2004
In this appeal we consider whether certain drug evidence should have been suppressed at trial because Wilmington police officers lacked the requisite level of cause to search the defendant's person and car and to seize the evidence found during those searches. We conclude that the evidence was admissible under the plain view and inevitable discovery doctrines. We also conclude that the Superior Court acted within its discretion when it permitted an investigating officer to provide both fact and expert testimony at trial. We further determine that the State offered sufficient evidence of the defendant's intent to deliver the drugs found in his possession to support his conviction for possession with intent to deliver cocaine. We find that the defendant waived his final argument on appeal by failing to raise it in the Superior Court. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.
Facts
On September 13, 2000, Detectives Sullivan, Chickadel, and Freebery of the Wilmington Police Department were on patrol in Wilmington in an unmarked FBI vehicle when Sullivan was approached by an informant who had provided the police with reliable information in the past. The informant said that a heavy-set black male wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt was sitting in a black Lincoln Continental near the corner of Fourth and Rodney Streets, selling crack cocaine.
The officers and other FBI task force members proceeded to the corner of Fourth and Rodney Streets, where they observed a man fitting the informant's description sitting in a black Lincoln Continental. The officers observed the man, later identified as the defendant, Rudolph Hardin, leave the car, walk over to a nearby house, and sit on the steps leading to the porch of the house. Chickadel ordered Hardin to stand up and put his hands on the porch. The detective then searched Hardin, finding seven small plastic bags of crack cocaine.
As Chickadel searched Hardin, Sullivan and Freebery approached Hardin's car. The front windows were down. Sullivan put his head into the car through the open driver's side window, and he then saw and seized a plastic bag of marijuana on the driver's door console. As Sullivan located and seized the marijuana, Freebery, who was standing outside the vehicle on the passenger's side, looked into the car and saw a plastic bag containing crack cocaine protruding from under the sun visor. Freebery reached into the car, grabbed the bag, and lowered it into Sullivan's hands.
*985 Hardin was indicted on charges of trafficking cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, maintaining a vehicle for keeping controlled substances, and possession of marijuana. Before trial, Hardin moved to suppress the drug evidence as the fruit of an unlawful search and seizure. The Superior Court denied the motion. A jury found Hardin guilty of all the charges against him. Hardin then moved for judgment of acquittal on the ground that the State had failed to provide sufficient proof of intent to deliver for the jury to consider the possession with intent to deliver charge. The court denied the motion. Hardin appeals from his conviction and sentence.
The Searches and Seizures: Plain View and Inevitable Discovery
Hardin first claims on appeal that the officers did not have the requisite level of cause to search either Hardin or his car. He asserts that the drug evidence found as a result of the searches should have been suppressed as the fruit of an illegal search and seizure. The State argues that the officers had probable cause to search Hardin. [FN1] It also contends that the officers observed the drugs in plain view in Hardin's car and that their observation of the drugs made it inevitable that the officers would arrest Hardin and discover the other drugs as the resu
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