Background
Linwood Sample pleaded guilty in December 2024 to driving under the influence as a seventh offense, a class C felony. His plea documents and colloquy reflected his agreement that he had five prior Delaware DUI convictions and one prior out-of-state DUI conviction. The parties jointly recommended a ten-year prison sentence suspended after two and a half years, and the Superior Court imposed that sentence. Sample did not appeal.
In a timely motion for postconviction relief under Superior Court Criminal Rule 61, Sample argued that a 1996 New York conviction should not count because it preceded his second DUI offense by more than ten years and had not previously been used as a predicate offense. He later argued that the New York conviction was not his, citing a three-day discrepancy between his birthdate and the birthdate in the New York court records. He claimed that counsel was ineffective for permitting the conviction to be used and that its use violated due process. The Superior Court denied relief.
The Court’s Holding
The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed. It held that Sample’s standalone challenge to the use of the New York conviction was procedurally defaulted because he pleaded guilty to seventh-offense DUI, agreed that the New York conviction qualified as a prior conviction, and did not establish cause and prejudice excusing his failure to raise the issue earlier.
The court also rejected Sample’s ineffective-assistance claim under Strickland. Sample admitted through the plea paperwork and colloquy that he had six prior DUI convictions, making him eligible for sentencing as a seventh offender even though the first offense occurred more than ten years before the second. The court concluded that he established neither objectively unreasonable performance by counsel nor a reasonable probability that, absent counsel’s alleged errors, he would have rejected the plea and gone to trial.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant who admits predicate convictions when pleading guilty generally cannot later challenge their use without overcoming Rule 61’s procedural-default requirements.
- Delaware’s seventh-offense DUI provision applies when the new offense occurs at any time after six prior DUI offenses; the interval between the earlier offenses does not prevent them from being counted.
- An ineffective-assistance challenge to a guilty plea requires proof of both deficient performance and a reasonable probability that the defendant otherwise would have insisted on trial.
Why It Matters
The order underscores the binding effect of a defendant’s representations in plea documents and during the plea colloquy, particularly admissions concerning prior convictions that determine the offense level and sentencing range.
It also confirms that the timing argument Sample advanced does not defeat seventh-offense treatment under Delaware’s DUI statute once six prior offenses have been admitted, and that recasting a defaulted sentencing challenge as ineffective assistance does not succeed without satisfying both parts of Strickland.