The Delaware Department of Correction announced Wednesday the death of a 77-year-old inmate serving a life sentence for the murder of James W. Powell.
In the 1970s, Powell was fatally shot in the head with a .22-caliber handgun by Walter Stokes Jr. during a robbery, prosecutors said at the time. In 1977, a Delaware Superior Court jury convicted Stokes of first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, first-degree conspiracy, and two counts of possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, plus additional years, at Level V incarceration.
On appeal, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed Stokes’s convictions for first-degree robbery and one count of possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony, citing insufficient corroboration of his confession. However, the court affirmed his convictions for first-degree murder, first-degree conspiracy, and the remaining weapons charge.
Over the subsequent decades, Stokes filed multiple motions seeking post-conviction relief. He also pursued a federal habeas corpus petition. In one filing, Stokes argued that he should have been sentenced to second-degree murder or manslaughter because he was intoxicated when the shooting occurred. All these efforts were unsuccessful, with courts consistently upholding his convictions and sentences.
On Tuesday, after serving almost five decades in prison Stokes reported experiencing shortness of breath in his cell at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna. Officers assisted him into a wheelchair and transported him to the prison infirmary for medical assessment.
At the infirmary, Stokes became unresponsive, and life-saving measures were immediately initiated by facility medical staff. Emergency Medical Services Paramedics arrived and continued the life-saving efforts. These measures were unsuccessful, and Stokes was pronounced dead by medical staff at 7:37 a.m. His body was turned over to the Division of Forensic Science to determine the cause of death.