People v. Harris

• Decision Date: 03 April 2014
• Docket Number: Calendar No. 7.,Docket No. 146212.
• Citation: 495 Mich. 120,845 N.W.2d 477
• Parties: PEOPLE v. HARRIS.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

495 Mich. 120

845 N.W.2d 477

PEOPLE

v.HARRIS.

Docket No. 146212.

Calendar No. 7.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued Oct. 9, 2013.

Decided April 3, 2014.

Bill Schuette, Attorney General, Aaron D. Lindstrom, Solicitor General, John A. McColgan, Jr., Prosecuting Attorney, and Randy L. Price, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.

State Appellate Defender (by Peter Jon Van Hoek) for defendant.

ZAHRA, J.

In People v. Fobb, the Court of Appeals held that an extortion conviction under the “against his will” prong of MCL 750.213 may only be maintained when the act defendant sought to compel entailed “serious consequences” to the victim.¹ This case requires us to revisit the Fobb decision. In the instant case, a jury convicted defendant of extortion after he maliciously threatened to injure a mechanic unless the mechanic resumed working on defendant's truck in the rain. Defendant, relying on Fobb, maintains that he cannot be convicted of extortion because the act defendant sought to compel—the mechanic's continued work on the truck—was not of serious consequence to the mechanic. But the plain language of the extortion statute, MCL 750.213, defines extortion in terms of whether the defendant maliciously threatened a person with harm in order to “compel the person so threatened to do ... any act against his will.” ² Thus, the Legislature clearly intended the crime of extortion to occur when a defendant maliciously threatens to injure another person with the intent to compel that person to do any act against his will, without regard to the significance or seriousness of the compelled act. Because the defendant's conduct satisfies the requirements set forth in MCL 750.213, we affirm his conviction of extortion. Furthermore, we overrule the Court of Appeals decisions in People v. Fobb and People v. Hubbard to the extent that those decisions require that the act or omission compelled by the defendant be of serious consequence to the victim.

I. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

Defendant, James Early Harris, Jr., agreed to pay Willie Lee Neal $400 to fix the transmission on defendant's truck. Defendant paid $210 in advance, and agreed to tender the balance upon completion of the work. On the afternoon of September 11, 2010, Neal was working on the truck in the shared driveway between defendant's home and that of his neighbor, Robbin Smith. Smith had just returned home from work, and her mother and aunt were sitting on her front porch.

It began to rain, and Smith's mother invited Neal to sit on Smith's covered porch to get out of the rain. Smith went inside to prepare a sandwich for Neal. When she returned outside, defendant was on the porch talking to Neal. He was upset that Neal was not repairing the truck. Neal indicated that he would resume working once it stopped raining, but defendant continued to express his displeasure with Neal. Offended by defendant's vulgar language, Smith asked defendant to leave her porch.

Defendant went into his house and returned with a handgun. Waving the gun, defendant confronted Neal from the side of Smith's porch. Defendant told Neal that he would “silence him” unless Neal either immediately resumed working on the truck or returned $100 of the prepaid compensation. Neal did neither, but instead indicated that he would rather meet his maker than capitulate to defendant's demands. The incident upset the three women on the porch. Smith's mother was in tears. Smith perceived defendant's actions as a threat, and announced her intention to telephone the police.

Defendant went home. He was in the shared driveway carrying a rifle when the police arrived. Defendant was arrested and charged with felonious assault, carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, assaulting, resisting or obstructing a police officer, and three corresponding counts of carrying a firearm during the commission of a felony (felony-firearm). The felonious assault charge was amended to extortion at the request of the prosecution, and defendant was bound over to circuit court on all counts.

A jury found defendant guilty of all counts after a three-day trial. Defendant appealed by right in the Court of Appeals, which affirmed his convictions in a divided, unpublished opinion.³

The Court of Appeals majority concluded that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant's extortion conviction. For present purposes, the first two elements of extortion are (1) an oral threat (2) to harm another person. The Court of Appeals reasoned that, because defendant held a gun and threatened Neal that he would “silence him” if Neal did not comply with defendant's demands, the first two elements of extortion were satisfied. ⁴ The Court of Appeals rejected defendant's contention that there was insufficient evidence to satisfy the third element of extortion—that defendant's threat was intended to compel Neal to perform an act against Neal's will.⁵ The Court of Appeals acknowledged that People v. Fobb held that only “serious” acts could support a conviction under the “against his will” prong of the extortion statute, but observed that “nothing in the statutory language of MCL 750.213 requires the action to be serious in nature or have significant value.” ⁶ The Court of Appeals concluded that defendant's threat was intended to compel Neal to perform an act against Neal's will and therefore the third element of MCL 750.213 was satisfied, even under the Fobb standard.⁷

Judge O' Connell dissented in part, asserting that “[e]stablished precedent required the prosecution to prove that defendant intended to compel Neal to do something that had serious consequences, against Neal's will.” ⁸ Because Neal had previously agreed to repair the truck for his own pecuniary benefit, Judge O'Connell reasoned that returning to work would not have been against Neal's will.⁹ In his view, neither returning to work nor returning $100 of the prepayment were of “serious consequence” to Neal as required by Fobb.¹⁰ Judge O'Connell concluded that although this Court might wish to clarify the elements of extortion and the holding in Fobb, the Court of Appeals panel was bound to follow precedent.¹¹ Therefore, Judge O'Connell would have reversed defendant's extortion conviction.

This Court granted leave to appeal to determine what the prosecution must prove to convict a defendant of extortion and whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain defendant's conviction.¹²

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

Whether the crime of extortion requires that the act compelled of the victim be one having “serious consequences” to the victim is a question of statutory interpretation, which is reviewed de novo.¹³ In determining whether sufficient evidence exists to sustain a conviction, this Court reviews the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, and considers whether there was sufficient evidence to justify a rational trier of fact in finding guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.¹⁴

III. ANALYSIS

A. INTERPRETING MCL 750.213

As always, the goal of statutory interpretation “ ‘is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the Legislature. The touchstone of legislative intent is the statute's language. If the statute's language is clear and unambiguous, we assume that the Legislature intended its plain meaning and we enforce the statute as written.’ ” ¹⁵

At common law, extortion was defined as “the unlawful taking by a public officer, under color of his office, of any money or thing of value that was not due to him, or more than was due, or before it was due.” ¹⁶ The origin of statutory extortion, however, is attributed at least in part to the English courts' refusal to expand the scope of common-law robbery:

The English courts had held it to be robbery, where a defendant coerced payment of money or goods by a threat to accuse the victim of sodomy or to destroy a dwelling; however, they refused to extend robbery to threats of other accusations or of other harm to persons or property. Thus, they held it was robbery when the threat was to commit immediate violence, but not robbery where the threat was of violence in the future, or was of destruction of property, or of accusation of crime. This gap in coverage was filled in various ways by the statutory extortion offenses enacted in many jurisdictions.[[¹⁷

Michigan was among those jurisdictions that enacted an extortion statute early in its statehood.¹⁸ The current version of the statute, MCL 750.213, provides:

Any person who shall, either orally or by a written or printed communication, maliciously threaten to accuse another of any crime or offense, or shall orally or by any written or printed communication maliciously threaten any injury to the person or property or mother, father, husband, wife or child of another with intent thereby to extort money or any pecuniary advantage whatever, or with intent to compel the person so threatened to do or refrain from doing any act against his will, shall be guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not more than 20 years or by a fine of not more than 10,000 dollars.

The statute has remained largely unchanged since its enactment more than 150 years ago.¹⁹

According to the plain language of the statute, the crime of extortion is complete when a defendant (1) either orally or by a written or printed communication, maliciously threatens (2) to accuse another of any crime or offense, or to injure the person or property or mother, father, spouse or child of another (3) with the intent to extort money or any pecuniary advantage whatever, or with the intent to compel the person threatened to do or refrain from doing any act against his or her will. In the instant case, the prosecution alleged that defendant maliciously threatened to injure Neal with the intent to compel Neal to do an act against his will.

Relying on Fobb, defendant maintains that the prosecution failed to prove that he intended to compel Neal to do “any act against his will.” In People v. Fobb, the...