People v. Manning, Docket No. 81682

• Decision Date: 28 February 1990
• Docket Number: Docket No. 81682
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robin Rick MANNING, Defendant-Appellant. 434 Mich. 1, 450 N.W.2d 534
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 534

450 N.W.2d 534

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robin Rick MANNING, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 81682.

434 Mich. 1, 450 N.W.2d 534

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued Jan. 5, 1989.

Decided Jan. 5, 1990.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 28, 1990.

Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Louis J. Caruso, Sol. Gen., Christopher S. Boyd, Pros. Atty. by Mitzi L. McPeck, Asst. Pros. Atty., Saginaw,for plaintiff-appellee.

State Appellate Defender Office by Chari Grove, Asst. Defender, Detroit, for defendant-appellant.

BOYLE, Justice.

In August, 1984, appellant Robin Rick Manning and William John Luna were charged with first-degree murder, carrying a weapon with unlawful intent, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony in connection with the fatal shooting of Thomas Newvine. Newvine's death stemmed from an argument between himself and Gilbert Morales at a neighborhood house party. During the course of the argument, Newvine forcefully ejected Morales from the party, at which time Morales threatened to return later and kill Newvine. After Morales was ejected from the party, he called William Luna's house seeking backup in the fight he intended to continue with Newvine.

Subsequently, the defendant and Luna drove to Morales' home, at which time Morales, armed with two guns, a long-barreled and a shorter-barreled weapon, joined them. When the trio arrived at the party, Newvine was standing in the street immediately outside the home in which the party was being held. Shots were fired from the car and Newvine was killed.

Defendant and William Luna were tried jointly for Newvine's murder. ¹

On the fifth day of trial, William Luna, on the basis of a plea bargain, ² pleaded guilty of second-degree murder. The defendant rejected a similar bargain against the advice of counsel.

Outside the jury's presence, Manning's counsel then asserted that a new trial was necessary in order to prevent the jury from drawing from Luna's plea an impermissible inference of Manning's guilt. Defense counsel did not object to the trial court's instruction advising the jury that Luna had pleaded guilty or limiting the substantive use of Luna's plea, but alternatively requested that the trial court inform the jury only that Luna pleaded guilty without specifying the charge to which the plea had been entered. No request was made to limit the prosecution's use of the plea, and no objection was interposed when the prosecution questioned Manning on direct examination regarding the plea.

The trial court denied the motion for a mistrial and informed the jury that Luna pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, cautioning the jury that it was not to draw any inference from Luna's guilty plea and that Manning remained entitled to the presumption of innocence. The instruction was given again prior to deliberation.

Luna testified that Mr. Manning answered the call from Morales asking for backup and that he and Manning drove to Morales' house where Morales brought the guns into the car and said he was going to "blow [the victim] away." He further testified that Manning drove to the party, got out of the car, and took the .22 from the back seat where Morales had placed it. Manning then entered the front passenger side of the car, passed the .22 to Morales, took the shotgun from him, and, with Luna driving, the three continued to look for Newvine. While Luna testified that Manning did not fire the gun he had, other testimony established that guns were fired both from the front passenger and rear windows. Thus, although Luna testified that Morales fired the fatal shots, his testimony inculpated defendant Manning as an aider and abettor of first-degree murder.

Luna was briefly questioned on direct examination about his plea. ³ On cross-examination, a pointed attack on Luna's credibility was made by defense counsel; ⁴ following that attack, the prosecution on redirect examination made further reference to the plea in an effort to bolster Luna's testimony.

The jury found Manning guilty of first-degree murder, carrying a weapon with unlawful intent, and felony-firearm.

After the Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction in an unpublished per curiam opinion, Manning sought leave to appeal in this Court. Leave was granted on two issues: 1) whether the trial court erred by denying the defendant's motion for a mistrial, and 2) whether the trial court erred in denying the defendant's request to keep from the jury the details of the codefendant's guilty plea. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the defendant's conviction.

I The Motion for Mistrial

The likelihood that Mr. Manning would be acquitted, or convicted of a lesser offense, was greatly diminished when Mr. Luna pleaded guilty and testified against him. However, the grant or denial of a motion for mistrial rests in the trial court's sound discretion, and an abuse will be found only where denial of the motion deprived the defendant of a fair and impartial trial. People v. Watson, 307 Mich. 596, 12 N.W.2d 476 (1943). Simply put, Mr. Luna's plea was an unfortunate turn of events for the defendant, but it did not constitute unfair prejudice. Luna's testimony was competent, relevant and undeniably admissible and the trial court's unobjected to cautionary instruction on defendant's right to be tried solely on the evidence of his own guilt appropriately addressed the potential prejudice inherent in the inculpatory nature of accomplice testimony.

That Luna's testimony was highly inculpatory is a proposition no reasonable person would dispute. However, were we to hold that the possibility of guilt by association could not be mitigated by a cautionary instruction, as the dissent suggests, it would logically follow that the only alternative would be to exclude accomplice testimony altogether. In this situation we rely on the "almost invariable assumption of the law that jurors follow their instructions...." Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 206, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 1707, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987). ⁵

We do not suggest that a trial court might not appropriately take the more drastic step of declaring a mistrial where it concludes that even the strongest curative instruction would be insufficient protection for a defendant. United States v. Baete, 414 F.2d 782 (CA5, 1969).

We merely hold that on this record, where there is no indication and no claim that the defendants attempted to exculpate themselves while destroying each other or that the prosecution timed the negotiations to achieve that result, the trial court's action did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial.

II The Court's Instruction Regarding the Plea

Having determined that William Luna's midtrial plea did not compel the declaration of a mistrial, the trial court was squarely faced with the issue regarding what to tell the jury about the absence of the codefendant from the defense table. The defense did not object to the jury being told that Luna had pleaded guilty. Rather, counsel asked only that the jury not be told that Luna's plea was to the second-degree murder charge because "it could have some influence on their deliberations because of the magnitude of the charge." Thus, defense counsel did not indicate any intent to forgo reference to the witness' plea but, rather, sought to avoid an inference favorable to credibility from the magnitude of the charge. "[S]uch a limitation on the details of the plea agreements would have been both unfair to the witnesses and misleading to the jury." United States v. Whitehead, 618 F.2d 523, 529 (CA4, 1980).

Suppression of Luna's plea of guilty of second-degree murder could have confused and misled the jury. ⁶ A strategic attempt to prevent the jury's knowledge of the charge to which Luna pleaded could logically only rest on the possibility that the defendant could benefit if the jury incorrectly speculated that Luna had somehow wriggled out of accepting criminal responsibility for the events to which he testified and had pleaded guilty of some other lesser or entirely different offense. Indeed, the dissent's identification of the "prejudice" to defendant Manning, on close examination, confirms that inviting such speculation is both the purpose and the function of the request to suppress. Obviously, it was not Luna's plea, but his testimony admitting that he aided and abetted the murder that prejudiced Mr. Manning, albeit not in an unlawful sense. Since it was Luna's testimony that incriminated Manning, it cannot logically be concluded that it was the details of the plea that "foreclosed the jury's ability logically to come to any different conclusion regarding Manning," P. 551. Stated otherwise, it is obvious that suppressing the charge to which he pleaded would not eliminate the risk of guilt by association inherent in Luna's testimony but, rather, would only have the effect of preventing the jury from drawing any rehabilitating inference of Luna's credibility from the fact that he had formally accepted criminal responsibility for his actions, a fact defense counsel alluded to in his reference to "the magnitude of the charge."

In sum, where it is apparent that a testifying accomplice will be impeached by his dealings with the government, we can perceive no unlawful prejudice to the defendant in the trial court's telling the jury what has occurred, provided the jury is properly cautioned regarding the limited use of the plea. United States v. Earley, 482 F.2d 53 (CA10, 1973), cert. den. 414 U.S. 1111, 94 S.Ct. 841, 38 L.Ed.2d 738 (1973); United States v. Beasley, 519 F.2d 233, 239 (CA5, 1975); United States v. Jones, 425 F.2d 1048, 1054 (CA9, 1970).

When a codefendant pleads guilty and is prepared to testify, a complete instruction avoids jury speculation, limits prejudice, and sets the stage for the issue the jury will almost invariably be asked to resolve, that is, the credibility of the accomplice's testimony.

Where it is clear, as it was both from the colloquy...