People v. Jones

• Decision Date: 04 November 2021
• Docket Number: 353266
• Parties: PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. MICHAEL MAGIK JONES, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
MICHAEL MAGIK JONES, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 353266

Court of Appeals of Michigan

November 4, 2021

UNPUBLISHED

Ingham Circuit Court LC No. 18-000724-FC

Before: Markey, P.J., and Beckering and Boonstra, JJ.

PER CURIAM

Defendant, Michael Magik Jones, appeals as of right his convictions following a jury trial of two counts of assault with intent to commit murder, MCL 750.83, felon in possession of a firearm, MCL 750.224f, and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony (felony-firearm), MCL 750.227b. The trial court sentenced defendant as a fourth-offense habitual offender, MCL 769.12, to concurrent prison terms of 60 to 100 years for each assault conviction and 6 to 20 years for the felon-in-possession conviction, to be served consecutively to three concurrent two-year terms of imprisonment for the felony-firearm convictions. We affirm.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Defendant was charged in two separate cases involving a series of related events that occurred on March 31, 2018, in Lansing, Michigan. The events began with a shooting at an apartment that belonged to Brandi Hubbard, the sister of defendant's ex-girlfriend, Jendayi Guy. According to Hubbard's preliminary hearing testimony, she heard a knock on her apartment door, but no one was there. She stepped out onto her balcony that faced the parking lot. She saw defendant and asked him what he wanted. Defendant then pulled out a gun and fired at the apartment. Approximately 45 minutes after the apartment shooting, a witness to that shooting recognized defendant on a nearby street and contacted the police. While Lansing Police Officer Sarah Willson was investigating the apartment shooting and speaking to Hubbard, she was called away to the location where defendant had been spotted. When she encountered defendant, she ordered him to stop, but he continued walking away and then turned and fired a gun at her from

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20 to 30 yards away. Officer Willson returned the gunfire, but did not hit defendant. Defendant ran around a corner and into a lumber yard, and Officer Willson called for assistance.

Officers from the police department's special tactics and rescue team (SMART) were dispatched to the scene and a police helicopter also responded. After the helicopter reported defendant's possible location in the lumber yard, the SMART team moved in while inside a BearCat, which is an armored, bullet-resistant, personnel carrier. The officers spotted defendant, who was lying on his back on the ground along the side of a building and pointing a firearm at the officers. As the BearCat drove past the building nearby defendant, defendant shot at the passenger side of the BearCat multiple times. According to one officer, defendant fired the gun while deliberately pointing it at the officer's head. The officers returned the gunfire and wounded defendant, disabling him. After securing defendant, the police found a .45-caliber Glock handgun lying nearby. These events were captured on video, including from the helicopter, and admitted as evidence at trial.

The police recovered a spent bullet from the scene of the apartment shooting and also recovered several spent shell casings and spent bullets from the scene of the officer-involved shooting. Ballistics testing showed that seven of the shell casings and one of the spent bullets recovered from the scene of the officer-involved shooting contained marks indicating that they were fired from the Glock handgun that was found near defendant. The bullet recovered from the apartment also matched the Glock handgun. Testing of the Glock handgun also revealed the presence of DNA that matched defendant's DNA profile.

In Case No. 18-000743-FH, defendant was charged with offenses related to the initial apartment shooting (the "apartment shooting" case), and in Case No. 18-000724-FC he was charged with offenses related to the officer-involved shooting (the "officer-involved shooting" case). The trial court granted the prosecutor's pretrial motion to join these two cases for trial.

At trial, Officer Willson testified regarding her initial investigation of the apartment shooting and her later encounter with defendant. A body camera recorded her interactions at both locations. Video footage of her encounter with defendant was introduced at trial and played for the jury, but the footage from her earlier encounter with Hubbard while investigating the apartment shooting was never introduced. During deliberations, the jury was provided with the exhibit that contained the video footage from Officer Willson's body camera. However, the jury was mistakenly given an unredacted video, which contained footage of both Officer Willson's initial encounter with Hubbard, which had not been introduced at trial, and the admitted portion involving her encounter with defendant.

The jury convicted defendant as charged in both cases.^[1] After trial, the judge spoke to the jurors, who reported that they had watched the video footage from Officer Willson's body camera during deliberations. According to the trial court, however, the jurors indicated that when they

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realized that the exhibit contained additional footage that had not been introduced at trial, they skipped ahead and watched only the portion that had been introduced into evidence.

Defendant moved for a new trial, arguing in part that he was prejudiced by the jurors' exposure to extraneous video footage that had not been introduced at trial. The trial court analyzed the likely impact of the extraneous video footage on each of the two cases separately. After observing that the unadmitted portion of the video was related only to the charges concerning the apartment shooting and was "not directly supportive of the charged assaults in the officer-involved shooting, the court denied defendant's motion for a new trial in the officer-involved shooting case. However, because the extraneous video footage directly related to the charges in the apartment shooting case, it had not been introduced at trial, and it was unknown how much the jury may have viewed it or whether it influenced the jury's verdict, the court granted defendant's motion for a new trial in the apartment shooting case. Thus, only defendant's convictions in Case No. 18-000724-FC (the officer-involved shooting case) are at issue in this appeal.

II. ANALYSIS

A. JOINDER

Defendant first argues that the trial court erred by joining the apartment shooting and officer-involved shooting cases for trial. We disagree.

In People v Williams, 483 Mich. 226, 231; 769 N.W.2d 605 (2009), the Michigan Supreme Court explained:

Generally, this Court reviews questions of law de novo and factual findings for clear error. The interpretation of a court rule, like matters of statutory interpretation, is a question of law that we review de novo. To determine whether joinder is permissible, a trial court must first find the relevant facts and then must decide whether those facts constitute "related" offenses for which joinder is appropriate. Because this case presents a mixed question of fact and law, it is subject to both a clear error and a de novo standard of review. [Citations omitted.]

However, the ultimate decision regarding permissive joinder of related cases "lies 'firmly within the discretion of trial courts.'" People v Gaines, 306 Mich.App. 289, 304; 856 N.W.2d 222 (2014), quoting People v Breidenbach, 489 Mich. 1, 14; 798 N.W.2d 738 (2011). A trial court does not abuse its discretion when it chooses an outcome within the range of reasonable and principled outcomes. People v Babcock, 469 Mich. 247, 269; 666 N.W.2d 231 (2003).

MCR 6.120(B), which governs postcharging permissive joinder, provides:

Postcharging Permissive Joinder or Severance On its own initiative, the motion of a party, or the stipulation of all parties, except as provided in subrule (C), the court may join offenses charged in two or more informations or indictments against a single defendant, or sever offenses charged in a single information or indictment against a single defendant, when appropriate to promote fairness to the

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parties and a fair determination of the defendant's guilt or innocence of each offense.

(1) Joinder is appropriate if the offenses are related. For purposes of this rule, offenses are related if they are based on

(a) the same conduct or transaction, or

(b) a series of connected acts, or

(c) a series of acts constituting parts of a single scheme or plan.

(2) Other relevant factors include the timeliness of the motion, the drain on the parties' resources, the potential for confusion or prejudice stemming from either the number of charges or the complexity or nature of the evidence, the potential for harassment, the convenience of witnesses, and the parties' readiness for trial.

(3) If the court acts on its own initiative, it must provide the parties an opportunity to be heard.

Similarly, MCR 6.120(C) provides that "[o]n the defendant's motion, the court must sever for separate trials offenses that are not related as defined in subrule (B)(1)." The Supreme Court has explained that charges are not related "simply because they [are] of the same or similar character." Williams, 483 Mich. at 235 (quotation marks and citation omitted). However, joinder is appropriate when charges are "logically related" and "there is a large area of overlapping proof." Id. at 237 (quotation marks and citation omitted).

The prosecutor moved for joinder of the apartment shooting case, the officer-involved shooting case, and a third case involving a shooting assault on February 27, 2018. The prosecution filed its motion on November 4, 2019, two months before defendant's scheduled trial. The prosecutor argued that joinder was appropriate...