DOVER, Del. (AP) - A federal judge has rejected the latest appeal by a former Delaware death row inmate who has spent two decades challenging his murder conviction and sentence.
The judge on Tuesday denied a habeas corpus petition filed by Adam Norcross and his request for an evidentiary hearing regarding claims of ineffective counsel.
Norcross, 49, and codefendant Ralph Swan were both sentenced to death in 2001 for the 1996 murder of Kenneth Warren of Kenton. Warren was shot four times in a home invasion robbery in front of his wife and 19-month-old son.
Norcross and Swan were resentenced to life in prison without parole after Delaware’s Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty law unconstitutional in 2016.
In his latest appeal, Norcross argued that police violated his constitutional rights by obtaining his recorded confession through a coercive interrogation and nullification of his Miranda rights. He also claimed prosecutors failed to provide the full content of his communication with police before he was interrogated, and that they failed to disclose the fact that his ex-wife stood to collect a $10,000 reward in exchange for testifying for the prosecution.
Norcross also claimed he was deprived of a fair trial because of perjured testimony by a ballistics expert with more than 30 year of experience working with the Baltimore police crime lab and Maryland State Police forensics division. Joseph Kopera testified that he had engineering degrees from two universities, but it was discovered years later in Maryland that he had falsified his credentials and did not have any college degree. Kopera committed suicide after the revelations.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.