THE BREAKDOWN: The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld the third-degree child abuse conviction of Stacy Jenkins, ruling that her appeal was completely groundless after her own defense attorney could find no legal errors to fight in court.
The Delaware Supreme Court has officially finalized a lower court’s criminal judgment against Stacy Jenkins, tossing out her direct appeal after reviewing her case and finding no legal errors to overturn.
Jenkins was previously convicted of one count of third-degree child abuse. The conviction followed a quick, one-day bench trial—a trial decided by a judge rather than a jury—in the Superior Court of Delaware. Immediately following the trial, the presiding Superior Court judge sentenced Jenkins to two years of incarceration. However, the judge suspended that prison time entirely, opting instead to place Jenkins on one year of Level II probation.
Following the sentencing, Jenkins filed a direct appeal to the state’s highest court, but the case quickly stalled from within her own defense team. Her appellate attorney filed a special motion to withdraw from the case, alongside a “no-merit brief” under Supreme Court Rule 26(c).
In the filings, her attorney asserted that he had completed a thorough and careful examination of the entire trial record and simply could not find any legally sound issues that could be argued on appeal.
Under Delaware law, defense attorneys who find no grounds for an appeal must still protect their client’s rights. Jenkins’ attorney provided her with a copy of the withdrawal motion and a draft of the brief, explicitly informing her that she had the right to step in and submit her own legal arguments to the court. Documents show that Jenkins chose not to raise any issues or submit supplementary arguments for the justices to consider. The State of Delaware subsequently moved to affirm the original judgment.
The case was officially submitted to the Delaware Supreme Court on April 15, 2026. Before making a final ruling, Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz, Jr., along with Justices Traynor and Griffiths, conducted an independent evaluation of the Superior Court trial records to verify that no mistakes were made.
In a final order issued on June 18, 2026, the high court sided entirely with the state and the defense attorney’s initial assessment.
The Supreme Court wrote that it “reviewed the record carefully and has concluded that Jenkins’ appeal is wholly without merit and devoid of any arguably appealable issues.”
The justices added that they were fully satisfied that Jenkins’ counsel made a conscientious effort to examine both the record and the law before correctly determining that a successful claim was impossible.
With the Supreme Court’s order affirming the Superior Court’s original judgment, Jenkins’ probation remains in place, and the motion from her attorney to withdraw was dismissed as moot.
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