Supreme Court hears arguments in Kellam appeal

The five justices of the Delaware Supreme Court have taken under advisement whether to uphold convictions of robbery and home invasion and reinstate two convictions of first-degree murder against Steven Kellam for his role in a 2014 double homicide in Millsboro.

The justices typically make a decision within 90 days of oral argument, which happened Feb. 19 in Dover. 

In September 2017, Kellam was convicted in Delaware Superior Court of two counts of first-degree murder along with robbery, conspiracy and weapons charges for the January 2014 murders of Cletis Nelson and William Hopkins, along with two other home invasions. Prosecutors alleged that Kellam was the ring leader of a group of men that carried out the murders and robberies. Kellam was sentenced to two life sentences and 769 years in prison.

Kellam’s appellate attorneys, Zachary George and Angelica Mamani, filed and won an appeal in Superior Court to vacate the murder charges on the basis that the jury was given outdated jury instructions and that Kellam’s trial counsel was ineffective in not bringing up the outdated instructions. George and Mamani also argued that prosecutors made substantive changes to Kellam’s indictment without seeking re-indictment, and that the Superior Court made an error when it allowed the state to move forward without a re-indictment. 

After winning that appeal, Kellam’s attorneys moved forward with seeking to have his remaining convictions vacated and a new trial held. 

Deputy Attorney General Kathryn Garrison, on behalf of the state, argued that Kellam’s remaining convictions should be upheld and filed a cross-appeal to have the Supreme Court overturn the lower court's ruling on the murder convictions. 

Prosecutors accused Kellam of being the ring leader behind a series of robberies and home invasions around Sussex County in 2014. The first of that series of robberies occurred in January of that year, when Kellam’s cousin, Shamir Stratton, came down from the Philadelphia area with three other relatives: Damon Bethea, Richard Robinson and Rhamir Waples. The motive of the group was ostensibly to commit a robbery, according to testimony from Stratton at trial. During the group’s weekend in Delaware, Hopkins got into a fight with Kellam’s roommate, John Snead. 

Later, Kellam, Stratton, Bethea, Waples and Robinson were at a party when they were notified of a house where Nelson and Hopkins lived where drugs and cash were stashed. The group committed to going to rob them.

Kellam allegedly handed out three handguns to Bethea, Robinson and Waples, and when Stratton asked Kellam what he wanted them to do to the guys in the house, Kellam responded “Kill ‘em.” 

Waples, Stratton and Robinson each took guilty pleas for their part in the murders, but Bethea was found not guilty at trial.

While Kellam did not pull the trigger himself, prosecutors charged him with two counts of murder based on the concept of accomplice liability, which during the Feb. 19 oral argument, Garrison described as when a defendant aids and abets an underlying felony, in this case robbery, and the murder was a result of that crime. 

Regarding Kellam’s appeal, George said the case came down to “how far can the state cut corners and the Superior Court cut a corner without violating Mr. Kellam’s due process and substantial rights.”

George said by not seeking re-indictment, the charges and sequence of events that Kellam was convicted of at trial was not the same as what he was indicted on by the grand jury. 

“The verdict at trial may have been based on a different pattern than one that was put before the grand jury,” he said.

The justices questioned George’s argument, saying the grand jury found probable cause for indicting Kellam on all the charges he was convicted of at trial. They also questioned George’s argument of ineffective counsel, saying that Kellam was advised of lesser included offenses he could have pursued but Kellam chose to pursue an all-or-nothing strategy, denying he procured the guns for the killings or that he gave the order for them to happen. 

Chief Justice Collins Seitz said, “This sounds like hindsight bias to me.”

In her arguments, Garrison said the erroneous jury instructions – based on an outdated version of Delaware’s first-degree murder statute – were actually more favorable to Kellam than the updated version, and yet a jury still convicted Kellam of ordering the deaths of Nelson and Hopkins.