People Of The State Of Mich. v. Mardlin

• Decision Date: 31 July 2010
• Docket Number: Calendar No. 4.,Docket No. 139146.
• Citation: 790 N.W.2d 607,487 Mich. 609
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Frederick James MARDLIN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

487 Mich. 609
790 N.W.2d 607

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
Frederick James MARDLIN, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 139146.
Calendar No. 4.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued April 13, 2010.
Decided July 31, 2010.

790 N.W.2d 608

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

790 N.W.2d 609

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

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Michael A. Cox, Attorney General, B. Eric Restuccia, Solicitor General, Michael D. Wendling, Prosecuting Attorney, and Timothy K. Morris, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.

Tieber Law Office (by F. Martin Tieber), East Lansing, for defendant.

Terrence E. Dean for Amicus Curiae Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan.

Opinion CORRIGAN, J.

487 Mich. 611

The Court of Appeals erroneously concluded that evidence of an unusual number of prior fires-each associated with property owned or controlled by defendant-was inadmissible in this arson case in which defendant was accused of intentionally starting a fire in his home. Because the evidence was not offered to prove defendant's bad character or his propensity to act in conformity with a bad character, the trial court correctly concluded that MRE 404(b)(1) did not preclude admission of the evidence. Further, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by concluding

487 Mich. 612

that the evidence was sufficiently probative to outweigh any danger of unfair prejudice under MRE 403. The Court of Appeals, like the dissent in this Court, incorrectly concluded that the lack of direct evidence that defendant intentionally set the past fires precluded or weighed against admission. To the contrary, as precedent of this Court has clearly established, defendant's apparent lack of direct culpability weighed in favor of admission because it minimized impermissible negative inferences about his character. Indeed, the evidence was noncharacter evidence admissible under the theory of logical relevance known as the doctrine of chances. Accordingly, we reverse the May 5, 2009 opinion of the Court of Appeals, ¹ reinstate defendant's convictions, and remand to the Court of Appeals for that Court to consider defendant's remaining arguments on appeal.

I. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

Defendant admitted that he was the only person present at his home just before it caught fire on the afternoon of November 13, 2006. He left the premises to visit his brother shortly before the fire was reported by neighbors. After the fire, defendant filed an insurance claim seeking compensation for the damage to his home. The investigating police detective and a fire investigator for defendant's insurer both concluded that the fire had been intentionally set and originated from a love seat in the living room. Accordingly, the prosecution charged defendant with arson of a dwelling house, MCL 750.72, and burning insured property, MCL 750.75. Defendant claimed that the fire was an accident likely caused by faulty electrical wiring.

487 Mich. 613

At trial, the prosecution showed that defendant had fallen behind on his mortgage payments and utility bills before the fire occurred. The prosecution also showed that defendant had been associated with four previous home or vehicle fires-each of which also involved insurance claims and arguably benefitted defendant in some way-in the 12 years preceding the charged fire. Specifically, defendant's home caught fire in the spring of 2006, apparently as the result of a blanket being left on a kerosene heater. Defendant filed an insurance claim for the resulting smoke damage. In 2003, a van driven by defendant but owned by his employer caught

790 N.W.2d 611

fire. The prosecution argued that defendant had a motive to damage this van. The employer had recently transferred a newer van, previously issued to defendant, to another employee; it then issued the van that later caught fire, which was an older model, to defendant. After the older van burned, the employer was forced to replace it. In 2001, defendant's own van caught fire and the fire spread to his mobile home. Defendant received an insurance payment for that van. Finally, in 1994, defendant's truck caught fire, for which he submitted an insurance claim. Although none of these fires was established to have resulted from arson, ² the prosecution argued that the pattern was probative to rebut defendant's claim that he had not intentionally set the November 2006 fire.

The jury indeed concluded from all the evidence that defendant intentionally set the November 2006 fire. It convicted him, as charged, of arson of a dwelling house and burning insured property. The trial court sentenced defendant to concurrent prison terms of 3 to 20 years and 1 to 10 years.

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The Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that the trial court improperly admitted the evidence of previous fires under MRE 404(b)(1). The appeals panel concluded that this evidence was irrelevant, inadmissible, and improperly prejudicial. Accordingly, it remanded for a new trial.

The prosecution applied in this Court for leave to appeal the Court of Appeals decision. We granted leave and directed the parties to address

whether evidence provided under the “doctrine of chances” may be used to establish that a fire did not have a natural or accidental cause, and whether more than the mere occurrence of other fires involving the defendant's property is necessary for admission of such evidence.^{[ 3 ]}

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

A trial court's discretionary decisions concerning whether to admit or exclude evidence “will not be disturbed absent an abuse of that discretion.” ⁴ When the decision involves a preliminary question of law however, such as whether a rule of evidence precludes admission, we review the question de novo. ⁵

III. MRE 404(b)(1)

MRE 404(b)(1) provides:

Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith. It may, however, be admissible for other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, scheme, plan, or system in doing an act, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or

487 Mich. 615

accident when the same is material, whether such other crimes, wrongs, or acts are contemporaneous with, or prior or subsequent to the conduct at issue in the case.

To admit evidence under MRE 404(b), ⁶ the prosecutor must first establish that

790 N.W.2d 612

the evidence is logically relevant to a material fact in the case, as required by MRE 401 and MRE 402, and is not simply evidence of the defendant's character or relevant to his propensity to act in conformance with his character. ⁷ The prosecution thus bears an initial burden to show that the proffered evidence is relevant to a proper purpose under the nonexclusive list in MRE 404(b)(1) or is otherwise probative of a fact other than the defendant's character or criminal propensity. ⁸ Evidence relevant to a noncharacter purpose is admissible under MRE 404(b) even if it also reflects on a defendant's character. Evidence is

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inadmissible under this rule only if it is relevant solely to the defendant's character or criminal propensity. ⁹ Stated another way, the rule is not exclusionary, but is inclusionary, because it provides a nonexhaustive list of reasons to properly admit evidence that may nonetheless also give rise to an inference about the defendant's character. ¹⁰ Any undue prejudice that arises because the evidence also unavoidably reflects the defendant's character is then considered under the MRE 403 balancing test, which permits the court to exclude relevant evidence if its “probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice....” MRE 403. ¹¹ Finally, upon request, the trial court may provide a limiting instruction to the jury under MRE 105 to specify that the jury may consider the evidence only for proper, noncharacter purposes. ¹²

IV. THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCES

The doctrine of chances-also known as the “doctrine of objective improbability”-is a “ ‘theory of logical relevance [that] does not depend on a character inference.’ ” ¹³ Under this theory, as

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the number of incidents of an out-of-the-ordinary event increases in relation to a particular defendant, the objective probability increases that the charged act and/or the prior occurrences were not the result of natural causes. The doctrine is commonly

487 Mich. 617

discussed in cases addressing MRE 404(b) because the doctrine describes a logical link, based on objective probabilities, between evidence of past acts or incidents that may be connected with a defendant and proper, noncharacter inferences that may be drawn from these events on the basis of their frequency. If a type of event linked to the defendant occurs with unusual frequency, evidence of the occurrences may be probative, for example, of his criminal intent or of the absence of mistake or accident because it is objectively improbable that such events occur so often in relation to the same person due to mere happenstance. To illustrate, United States v. York ¹⁴ provides a classic description of the doctrine when used to negate innocent intent:

The man who wins the lottery once is envied; the one who wins it twice is investigated. It is not every day that one's wife is murdered; it is more uncommon still that the murder occurs after the wife says she wants a divorce; and more unusual still that the jilted husband collects on a life insurance policy with a double-indemnity provision. That the same individual should later collect on exactly the same sort of policy after the grisly death of a business partner who owed him money raises eyebrows; the odds of the same individual reaping the benefits, within the space of three years, of two grisly murders of people he had reason to be hostile toward seem incredibly low, certainly low enough to support an inference that the windfalls were the product of design rather than the vagaries of chance.... This inference is purely objective, and has...