People v. Henderson
| Decision Date | 18 May 2023 |
| Docket Number | 358579 |
| Parties | PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DESI LEE HENDERSON, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US |
UNPUBLISHED
Saginaw Circuit Court LC No. 19-046493-FC
Before: MARKEY, P.J., and MURRAY and FEENEY, JJ.
Defendant Desi Lee Henderson, was convicted by a jury of three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct (CSC-I), MCL 750.520b(1)(a) and (2)(b) () and one count of disseminating sexually explicit material to a minor, MCL 722.675. He was sentenced as a fourth-offense habitual offender, MCL 769.12, to 30 to 50 years' imprisonment for the CSC-I convictions and 4 to 10 years' imprisonment for the dissemination conviction, all to be served concurrently. Defendant appeals by right, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, an evidentiary error created by an unconstitutional statute, prosecutorial misconduct, instructional error, and multiple sentencing defects. We affirm.
This case came to the attention of authorities on June 22, 2019, when they were first alerted to allegations of sexual abuse committed by defendant, then 48 years old, against the complainant, LJ, who was then eight years old. At trial in July of 2021, the prosecution presented the testimony of LJ, LJ's mother-Mahogany Jakes, LJ's biological sister-DS, who testified, in part, about herself being sexually assaulted by defendant, Officer Justin McGregor, who met with LJ and her mother at a local hospital, and Tammie Gillespie, a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) who interviewed and physically examined LJ. Defendant, exercising his constitutional rights, chose not to take the stand or call any witnesses. We note that our discussion of the trial testimony reveals numerous inconsistencies and some disjointed statements. Whether these discrepancies reflected the youthful ages of LJ and DS, simple memory lapses due to the passage of time, or intentional misrepresentations was for the jury to assess and resolve, not this panel on appeal.
The prosecution's first witness was LJ. The trial court briefly questioned her to determine whether she knew the difference between the truth and a lie; she did. LJ indicated that she was presently 10 years old. She had at one time resided in a townhouse in the city of Saginaw with defendant, her mother, and LJ's six siblings, the youngest two of whom were defendant's biological children.[1] Defendant is not LJ's biological father. LJ shared a bedroom with one or more of her siblings.
On June 22, 2019, while her mother was at work, eight-year-old LJ was playing games with her siblings when she misbehaved and got into trouble. Defendant was in the basement of the home at the time, and LJ's sister, DS, took her down to the basement and told on her to defendant. LJ testified that her sister then went back upstairs. LJ knew that she was in trouble, and she had received "whoopings" from defendant in the past. Instead, according to LJ, this time defendant did "nasty things" to her. LJ claimed that defendant told her to lie down and that he then put his private part in her private part. LJ further testified, however, that defendant tried to put his private part in her private part but it did not go inside her, although it did hurt. LJ next indicated that defendant put his private part in her bottom and that it hurt. LJ explained that earlier at a different house when she was four years old, defendant had put his private part in her bottom and it had hurt.
LJ proceeded to testify that she never saw defendant's "middle" or private part and that he never put it anywhere else on her body. But she then contended that he had placed his private part in her mouth on one occasion. She never observed anything come out of his private part, although he cleaned up something white with a towel when they were in the basement. LJ asserted that she took a shower or bath afterward. She maintained that she was wiping "everything," even though there was nothing on her that had to be wiped off. LJ did not see any blood, but she said that it did "hurt." After coming upstairs following the sexual assault in the basement on June 22, 2019, LJ phoned her mother at work. LJ testified that she told her mother that defendant was "doing horrible things." At some point, defendant spoke on the phone with Jakes, but LJ did not hear their conversation. According to LJ, after defendant got off the phone with LJ's mother, defendant turned toward her and asked, "Why did you tell?" LJ did not respond. Jakes left work and went home after the phone call. And she then took LJ to the hospital. LJ testified that she was examined and interviewed by a lady at the hospital.
The subject turned to alleged sexual abuse of LJ before June 22, 2019, which began when LJ was four years old. LJ testified that she never spoke to anyone about the sexual assaults before June 22, 2019, because she did not want her brothers to know, she was too little and scared, and because defendant commanded her not to tell anyone what was happening. When asked by the prosecutor how often defendant sexually assaulted her, LJ responded, "I think once a week." LJ contended that defendant would put his private part in or on her bottom or vagina and that it hurt. She stated that she did not notice any injuries.
LJ additionally testified that on one occasion defendant showed her a video on her brother's tablet that showed naked males and females touching each other's private parts. Defendant told her to watch it, and it was the first time that she had seen anything like it.
On cross-examination, LJ testified that her mother worked a lot, that defendant would discipline LJ when she misbehaved, that he would whoop and yell at her in the process, and that she was the only one who would get in trouble. LJ posited that she missed her real father, with whom she seldom visited. She did not care for defendant, nor did her brothers and sisters. Indeed, LJ stated that defendant was mean to her and her siblings and that she hated him. LJ asserted that she and her siblings wanted her mother to reunite with LJ's biological father, and LJ had hoped that if defendant left the family home, Jakes and LJ's father would again become a couple. LJ acknowledged that she effectively got defendant removed from the home on the basis of her allegations of sexual abuse.
LJ indicated that after the incident on June 22, 2019, she spoke to the police, to the Child Abuse &Neglect (CAN) Council, and to a lady and other people at the hospital. LJ claimed that defendant sexually touched her on a weekly basis since she was four years old. LJ testified that she loved and confided in her mother, but she never mentioned to her mother that defendant was abusing her starting from age four until the disclosure on June 22, 2019. LJ further acknowledged that even though she learned about "bad" touches in school, she never told her teachers over a period of several years that she was being sexually abused by defendant. LJ also conceded that she never told her siblings about the assaults, that she never yelled out when they were occurring, and that no one ever saw defendant abusing LJ. With respect to the sexual assault on June 22, 2019, LJ acknowledged that she did not yell out for help during the abuse. She also admitted that she told her mother that defendant's and LJ's private parts only touched and not that defendant's privates went inside LJ's privates; she added the "inside" aspect later.
Defense counsel was able to elicit testimony from LJ reflecting inconsistencies in her claims of abuse. At defendant's preliminary examination, LJ accused defendant of making her perform oral sex, yet she had never previously mentioned anything about oral sex to the police, the CAN Council, doctors, or anyone else for that matter during the one-year period between her initial disclosure in June 2019 and the preliminary examination. LJ admitted that she kept adding allegations of sexual abuse. LJ acknowledged that before the preliminary examination, she had informed various persons that the sexual assaults had only occurred a couple of times, but she then changed her story, claiming that defendant assaulted her on a daily basis. She told Children's Protective Services (CPS) that the abuse was occurring every morning. LJ also testified on cross-examination that defendant sexually abused her on a weekly basis.
LJ admitted that she lied to her mother on occasion and that she had been caught by her siblings running around the house with her pants down when defendant was not present. LJ agreed that she had told a doctor that defendant tried to put his private part in LJ but was unable to do so. LJ noted that at times she would scrub her private part real hard while in the shower, which made it red and sore afterwards. LJ did not recall having a vaginal rash on June 22, 2019.
With respect to LJ's seeing a sexually explicit video, defense counsel confronted her with a statement she made to the police that the video showed only women and not men and women. LJ replied that the all-women video was a second video that defendant showed her and that the first video depicted men and women having sex. LJ could not remember when she saw the videos, and she did not tell her mother that defendant had shown her the videos. LJ acknowledged that she only reported seeing one video during her testimony at the preliminary examination.
On redirect examination, LJ observed that defendant was not always mean, that he was nice to her on occasion, and that he would play games with her at times. Apparently to the surprise of the prosecutor, LJ testified that she knew that de...
To continue reading
Request your trial