DOVER, Del. (AP) - Delaware's Supreme Court has reversed a judge's ruling dismissing a murder indictment against an alleged gang member after prosecutors violated his constitutional rights by seizing confidential attorney-client communications from his prison cell days before his trial was to start.
Tuesday's 3-2 ruling came with the court's stark condemnation of prosecutors' behavior in the case against Jacquez Robinson. In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Leo Strine described the prosecutorial misconduct, and subsequent attempts by the state to minimize it, as "disturbing and inexcusable."
Robinson was charged in the 2014 killing of 18-year-old Malik Watson in New Castle. Watson was shot just weeks after Robinson had been arrested in connection with another shooting that left a 19-year-old Wilmington man wounded.
Prosecutors claim Robinson was a member of a violent Wilmington street gang.
