Pedophile pediatrician loses Supreme Court appeal

Earl Bradley, the former Lewes pediatrician who committed a horrifying string of child rapes in his doctor's offices before his 2009 arrest, lost a last state-level appeal to have Delaware courts grant him a new trial.

In a March 3 opinion, the Delaware Supreme Court said Bradley's motion for postconviction relief was a futile attempt to re-litigate complaints about his trial that had already been resolved in earlier appeals.

The court, in a three-justice opinion signed by Justice Karen L. Valihura, said Bradley failed to prove the Superior Court had erred in handling his trial. Bradley, in a 2014 motion, had argued the state denied him a right to choice of counsel when it froze assets he could have used to pay a private-practice lawyer.

He also raised two points relating to whether a police search of his medical practice on Dec. 16, 2009, hours before his arrest, conformed to the limits of a search warrant. His attorneys, Bradley argued, were ineffective because they failed to convince a judge to rule some evidence gathered in that search was inadmissible.

Bradley was convicted after a one-day trial in 2011 in which his lawyers did not contest the videotaped evidence but preserved the right to challenge the search as illegal. He is serving 14 life sentences plus 164 years in prison. The charges he was convicted of represent more than 100 abused children, some of them infants who were in his care.

Bradley was first represented by a private attorney but went to trial with public defenders. The Supreme Court opinion points out Bradley did not "assert a right to choice of counsel" before his conviction, and said it was too late for him to raise that point now.

"There can be no dispute that the State of Delaware provided Bradley with ample resources for his defense," the opinion says.

And the opinion says the way Bradley's court-appointed trial attorneys, Robert Goff and Dean Johnson, made a "strategic decision" to raise certain issues about the search and the warrant did not violate a "standard of objective reasonableness." The court, in essence, said Bradley's trial lawyers knew what they were doing when it came to challenging the search's legality, even if the Superior Court judge didn't buy their argument.

"Bradley is simply repackaging his previous argument on direct appeal," the opinion said. "Bradley has not shown that reconsideration of this argument is warranted in the interest of justice."

The opinion notes that Bradley late in 2015 filed a motion to have his court-appointed appellate lawyer, Patrick Collins, replaced by someone else. The Supreme Court denied that motion in January.

On Friday, Collins said he would not comment on the ruling because of the potential for further litigation.

In Lewes, meanwhile, a home once owned by Bradley that was donated to Bethel United Methodist Church might be torn down, although it's in Lewes's carefully guarded historic district. The church this week sought permission from the town's Historic Preservation Commission to demolish the single-family home at 344 Savannah Road. A public hearing on the request will be scheduled later this year.

Staff writer Jessica Reyes contributed to this story. Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.