State of West Virginia v. Ralph E. Starr

Summary

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reversed Starr's conviction for being an accessory before the fact to robbery by force. It held the prosecutor committed highly prejudicial error by arguing in rebuttal that the State need not prove Starr knew what he was doing, an essential element of the crime, and the trial court's failure to give a corrective statement upon objection could not be ignored. The Court also noticed, as plain error raised for the first time in the reply brief, that the trial court applied the wrong standard of proof at the voluntariness hearing, requiring a mere 'prima facie' showing rather than proof by a preponderance of the evidence that Starr's incriminating statement was voluntary. It declined to rule directly on the reasonable-doubt definitional instructions while strongly discouraging them, and upheld refusal of the defendant's shared-intent instruction as not tailored to the accessory-before-the-fact charge.