People v. Beesley
| Decision Date | 22 April 2021 |
| Docket Number | 348921 |
| Citation | 337 Mich.App. 50,972 N.W.2d 294 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jarrett Delmar BEESLEY, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US |
Dana Nessel, Attorney General, Fadwa A. Hammoud, Solicitor General, Kym L. Worthy, Prosecuting Attorney, Jon P. Wojtala, Chief of Research, Training, and Appeals, and Brittany Taratuta, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.
State Appellate Defender (by Douglas W. Baker ) for defendant.
Before: Tukel, P.J., and Jansen and Cameron, JJ.
Tukel, P.J. Defendant appeals as of right his jury-trial conviction of first-degree criminal sexual conduct (CSC-I), MCL 750.520b (multiple variables);1 unlawful imprisonment, MCL 750.349b ; and domestic violence, MCL 750.81(2).2 Defendant was sentenced to concurrent terms of 7 to 20 years’ imprisonment for CSC-I and 2 to 15 years’ imprisonment for unlawful imprisonment, as well as a term of 65 days in jail, time served, for domestic violence. On appeal, defendant argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a mistrial following testimony by a police officer regarding defendant's criminal history. Defendant additionally argues that the trial court erred by sentencing him, in part, on the basis of conduct of which he had been acquitted. We disagree and therefore affirm defendant's convictions and sentence.
This case arises from an altercation between defendant and the victim, his wife. Defendant and the victim were living separately when the incident occurred. On the evening in question, the victim arrived home to her apartment and discovered defendant inside, uninvited. According to the victim, defendant had a gun and repeatedly threatened to kill the victim and himself. At one point, defendant grabbed the victim by the throat. The victim testified that she attempted to calm defendant down for several hours and complied with everything defendant asked of her out of fear for her own safety. The victim further testified that her compliance with defendant's directives included having sex with defendant, taking a shower with defendant the following morning, and accompanying defendant to get coffee the morning after the incident occurred. The victim stated that she wanted to escape from defendant throughout the entirety of the encounter, but was too afraid to do so.
During the victim's testimony at trial, defense counsel asked her when she and defendant had last been physically intimate before the incident occurred. The victim responded that her sexual relationship with defendant Defense counsel did not object to this response.
The following day of trial, Detective Joseph Carr of the Wyandotte Police Department testified that he executed the search warrant of defendant's home after the victim reported the incident. On redirect examination, the following exchange occurred:
Defense counsel immediately objected and subsequently moved for a mistrial. The trial court denied defendant's motion for a mistrial but offered to give a curative jury instruction and to strike Detective Carr's answer. Defense counsel chose to recross-examine Detective Carr in lieu of the trial court striking the answer. The trial court also provided a curative jury instruction, and defense counsel expressed satisfaction with the instruction. Defendant was then convicted and sentenced as detailed earlier. This appeal followed.
Defendant argues that Detective Carr's testimony about his criminal history was so prejudicial that the trial court erred by denying defendant's motion for a mistrial. We disagree.
We review a trial court's denial of a motion for a mistrial for an abuse of discretion. People v. Schaw , 288 Mich. App. 231, 236, 791 N.W.2d 743 (2010). "This Court will find an abuse of discretion if the trial court chose an outcome that is outside the range of principled outcomes." Id. "A motion for a mistrial should be granted only for an irregularity that is prejudicial to the rights of the defendant and impairs the defendant's ability to get a fair trial." People v. Dickinson , 321 Mich. App. 1, 18, 909 N.W.2d 24 (2017) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Thus, "[f]or a due process violation to result in reversal of a criminal conviction, a defendant must prove prejudice to his or her defense." Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted). And the extent of the prejudice is a critical factor: "[T]he moving party must establish that the error complained of is so egregious that the prejudicial effect can be removed in no other way." Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted); see also People v. Caddell , 332 Mich. App. 27, 37, 955 N.W.2d 488 (2020).
Defendant relies heavily on People v. Holly , 129 Mich. App. 405, 415, 341 N.W.2d 823 (1983), which was decided before November 1, 1990, and therefore lacks precedential authority. See MCR 7.215(J)(1). In Holly , a police officer was asked on cross-examination whether the defendant had said anything more than what the officer had written down when taking defendant's statement. The officer responded that Holly had admitted involvement in at least one other armed robbery. Id. at 414-415, 341 N.W.2d 823. This Court stated, Id. at 415-416, 341 N.W.2d 823 (citation omitted). The Court further added: Id. at 416, 341 N.W.2d 823.
Holly has been cited by a handful of published opinions, but no majority opinion in any of those decisions has cited Holly for its view of the "special obligation" police witnesses have to avoid testifying about "forbidden areas," such as a defendant's criminal history. We think Holly ’s analysis is faulty, and we expressly reject it. The proper analysis for a motion for mistrial depends principally, if not exclusively, on whether a defendant has been prejudiced by an irregularity or error.
After its statement regarding the "special obligation" of police witnesses, the Holly Court in fact ignored most of what it had said about improper police testimony and engaged in what was essentially a proper analysis focused on prejudice; consequently, the Court upheld the conviction.3 The Court stated, Id. at 416, 341 N.W.2d 823. Nevertheless, while it acknowledged the "undeniable prejudice of the testimony," the Court affirmed the defendant's convictions, explaining that "[t]he evidence against him was simply too strong." Id.
Holly ’s analysis demonstrates the weakness of its statements about what it termed improper police officer testimony. This Court determined that police officer testimony about Holly's participation in other robberies was prejudicial error but not error requiring reversal. That conclusion about the ultimate effect on the verdict of any improper officer testimony was not affected by the fact that the testimony had been given by a police officer. An analysis of prejudice focuses on the effect of what took place (the hearing of improper testimony), rather than whether an officer acted improperly by testifying to certain facts; in other words, in Holly , it was the disclosure of defendant's criminal history or involvement in other robberies which prejudiced him, not the identity of the witness who testified to those facts. Holly gave no reason in support of evaluating an officer's testimony for impropriety under a different standard than would be used to evaluate any other witness's testimony; it certainly cannot be because a jury is more likely to believe an officer's testimony, as the law provides, and juries are instructed, that an officer's testimony is to be judged "by the same standards you use to evaluate the testimony of any other witness." M. Crim. JI 5.11 (police witness).
The facts of this case bear out the deficiencies in Holly ’s analysis. In this case, defendant's wife testified that he had been jailed for a probation violation. If the jury's verdict would have been affected because that testimony was "so egregious that the prejudicial effect can be removed in no other way" than by the granting of a mistrial, Dickinson , 321 Mich. App. at 18, 909 N.W.2d 24, then the identity of the witness who provided the testimony would not matter. Indeed, it is often family members and close associates of a defendant who are most familiar with the facts regarding a defendant's criminal activity. Yet, as the holding in Holly demonstrated, the case turned on the fact that the other evidence was "simply too strong" for the defendant to have been prejudiced; it did not matter to the final result that the testimony was provided by a police officer because the testimony did not...
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