Noah Sharp wasn’t particularly wet when he returned home on the afternoon of Oct. 2, 2020, his mother, Nikia Sharp, testified Wednesday. But his brother David Sharp said from the stand that Noah was “soaked.”
Annika Stalczynski was “calm,” Nikia Sharp said, when the teen walked through the front door of Sharp’s residence that same afternoon. David Sharp, who testified after his mother, recalled that Stalczynski “stormed in,” slamming the door twice.
Nikia and Noah Sharp hadn’t spoken about evidence in the case against her son, the woman said in court. Yet prosecutors played audio of a recent prison phone call between Sharp and his mother discussing video evidence that shows Sharp at Maclary Elementary School near Newark.
These are just several of the contradictory statements Sharp’s family members made Wednesday morning when called as witnesses in the murder trial against 21-year-old Sharp. He is charged with killing his ex-girlfriend, 17-year-old Madison Sparrow, at Maclary Elementary.
After Sparrow’s death, prosecutors say Sharp and Stalczynski tried to drown the girl’s body in the Christina River before ultimately burying her in a shallow grave about 15 minutes south of the elementary school. Stalczynski pleaded guilty to murder and conspiracy earlier this year for her role in the killing.
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Sharp’s family’s testimony, which came after more than a week of evidence presented by prosecutors, constituted nearly all of the defense’s case. Attorneys for Sharp presented fewer than two dozen defense exhibits compared with the state’s more than 250.
In less than three hours, Sharp’s mother, brother and grandmother testified about Sharp’s behavior when he returned home on the afternoon of Sparrow’s death, as well as the days following.
Tensions ran high in the courtroom as Nikia Sharp took the stand, where she argued with prosecutor Matt Frawley during cross-examination.
Several of Sharp’s family members – which included an aunt, cousin and at least one of his siblings – also became disruptive during Nikia Sharp’s testimony, with one family member loudly saying at one point, “Get ‘em, get ‘em” in response to the woman’s words.
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The family’s behavior prompted an increased police presence in the courtroom, with at least five Capitol police officers standing in the back of the room at one point. It also elicited a warning from the judge.
“Jurors pick up on (emotion), and you wouldn’t want to do anything that would harm them in reaching the correct verdict or influence them in any way,” Judge Ferris Wharton said.
Aside from these sparks Wednesday morning, Sharp’s family members were largely calm as they spoke about a head injury the then-19-year-old suffered on Sept. 13, 2020 – about three weeks before the killing – and another unconfirmed head injury they say Sharp got falling off his bicycle hours before he spoke to police on Oct. 4, 2020.
Sharp’s defense team, and the young man himself in police interviews, had mentioned the head injury throughout the trial, but it was unclear until Wednesday what role the injury would play in the defense’s case.
Ultimately, Sharp’s family members’ testimony and his defense attorneys suggested the head injury caused Sharp to have dissociative amnesia, perhaps explaining his repeated lies to police.
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But in closing arguments Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors questioned whether the injury was “simply a part” of the plot to kill Sparrow and nothing more than a red herring, something the defense did little to rebut.
Instead in closing arguments, Sharp’s attorneys harped on the length of time police spent interviewing Sharp: Nearly nine hours between 9:45 p.m. on Oct. 4 and about 12:45 p.m. on Oct. 5.
Defense attorney Monika Germono said detectives “interrogated him,” putting words in the young man’s mouth.
“His statements were molded by police,” Germono argued, despite police not knowing what had happened to Sparrow at the outset of the interview and Sharp later leading them to the location of her body.
Germono also said Sharp was in a “David and Goliath situation” with police, where they far outnumbered him.
At no point in the recorded video interviews, however, was Sharp seen being interviewed by more than two detectives. He was also sitting in a “soft” interview room with a couch, a coffee table and several chairs during the first, six-plus-hour interview. That interview ended sometime after 3 a.m. on Oct. 5 and culminated with Sharp showing police Sparrow’s burial site.
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The second interview began a little before 11 a.m. on Oct. 5. Sharp had been placed in a holding cell between interviews.
Germono also attacked Stalczynski’s credibility and the veracity of her testimony on Monday. She emphasized the teen’s plea agreement, which required her to testify in exchange for prosecutors recommending a sentence of 30 years in prison instead of life.
Still, as prosecutors noted, it’s ultimately up to a judge to determine a person’s sentence – and the state’s recommendation is not always adhered to, as was the case in the sentencing of Dejoynay Ferguson.
Ferguson pleaded guilty last year to murder for suffocating an infant in 2019. As part of her plea, prosecutors asked for 65 years behind bars. A judge sentenced her to life in prison, meaning she will die there. Delaware does not have parole.
The jury of 16 men and women – 12 jurors plus four alternates – is expected to begin deliberations Thursday.
Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com. For all things breaking news, follow her on Twitter at @izzihughes_
