People v. Randolph
| Decision Date | 15 June 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 153309,153309 |
| Parties | PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ANDREW MAURICE RANDOLPH, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
This syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
Reporter of Decisions: Kathryn L. Loomis
Andrew M. Randolph was convicted after a jury trial in the Genesee Circuit Court, Geoffrey L. Neithercut, J., of second-degree murder, MCL 750.317; discharging a firearm into a building, MCL 750.234b; being a felon in possession of a firearm, MCL 750.224f; and possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony, MCL 750.227b, in connection with the fatal shooting of Vena Fant, his girlfriend's mother. The night before the shooting, defendant had fought with his girlfriend and packed his belongings into bags before departing. Fant then brought these bags to the home of defendant's father, Alphonso Taylor. After the shooting, without a search warrant, the police obtained Taylor's consent to search the bags, which contained several rounds of ammunition. An arrest warrant was later issued and executed on defendant at his brother's apartment, where a search revealed a handgun linked to the killing. At trial, the prosecution's case relied in part on testimony about threats defendant had made to the victim's family on the day of the shooting and evidence of the ammunition and gun found during the investigation. Regarding the threats, Linda Wilkerson, the sister of Fant's fiancé, testified that Fant said that defendant had been calling throughout the day and threatening to kill the family. Defense counsel did not object to this testimony, nor did he object to the admission of the ammunition and gun as evidence. Defendant appealed his convictions, arguing that his counsel had been ineffective, and the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court for a hearing pursuant to People v Ginther, 390 Mich 436 (1973). At the hearing, defendant's father, Taylor, testified that he had not touched defendant's bags or received defendant's permission to open them and that when the police searched the bags, they never asked whether Taylor had permission to go through them. Trial counsel admitted that he had no strategic reason for failing to file a motion to suppress the ammunition found at Taylor's house. After the hearing, the trial court rejected defendant's ineffective-assistance claim, ruling that counsel's performance was not deficient and that, in any case, defendant was not prejudiced. Defendant appealed on this basis and also on the basis of the unpreserved alleged errors by the trial court relating to the admission of evidence. The Court of Appeals, SAWYER, P.J., and K. F. KELLY and FORT HOOD, JJ., affirmed in an unpublished per curiam opinion issued November 24, 2015 (Docket No. 321551), part that defendant could not establish his ineffective-assistance claim because he had not established that plain error had occurred. The Supreme Court ordered and heard oral argument on whether to grant the application for leave to appeal or take other peremptory action. 500 Mich 999 (2017).
In a unanimous opinion by Justice VIVIANO, the Supreme Court, in lieu of granting leave to appeal, held:
A defendant's inability to establish that the trial court committed a plain error does not necessarily preclude the defendant from establishing the ineffective assistance of counsel on the basis of that same error. The standards for establishing plain error by the trial court and ineffective assistance of trial counsel have separate legal elements that focus on different facts. Accordingly, courts must independently analyze each claim, even if the subject of a defendant's ineffective-assistance claim relates to the same error. Because the Court of Appeals failed to apply the standards set forth in Strickland v Washington, 466 US 668 (1984), to defendant's ineffective-assistance claims, the Court of Appeals' holdings as to those claims were reversed and the case was remanded to the Court of Appeals to review those claims under the Strickland framework in light of the trial record and the record produced at the Ginther hearing.
1. Under Strickland, establishing ineffective assistance requires a defendant to show that trial counsel's performance was objectively deficient and that the deficiencies prejudiced the defendant. Prejudice means a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome. The plain-error standard set forth in People v Carines, 460 Mich 750 (1999), which governs unpreserved errors at trial, has four elements: (1) error must have occurred, (2) the error was plain, i.e., clear or obvious, (3) the plain error affected substantial rights, and (4) the plain, forfeited error resulted in the conviction of an actually innocent defendant or an error seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings independent of the defendant's innocence. A "clear or obvious" error under the second prong is one that is not subject to reasonable dispute. The third element generally requires a showing of prejudice, i.e., that the error affected the outcome of the lower court proceedings. Under Carines, it is the trial court's unobjected-to error that is the subject of plain-error review, whereas the ultimate determination of an ineffective-assistance claim under Strickland is whether the defendant has suffered a genuine deprivation of the right to effective assistance of counsel. Accordingly, plain-error claims and ineffective-assistance claims have their own elements and require different analyses. Furthermore, an appellate court need not look beyond the trial court record when reviewing a trial court's mistake for plain error, whereas the errors underlying ineffective-assistance claims often are not apparent from the trial record and require additional evidentiary development. Accordingly, courts should address ineffective-assistance claims based on the pertinent inquiry—the effect of counsel's deficient performance—considering the pertinent facts, which may include facts developed at an evidentiary hearing.
2. The Court of Appeals impermissibly conflated the plain-error and ineffective-assistance standards when analyzing the admission of the ammunition and murder weapon. Defendant argued on appeal that this evidence was the fruit of an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment because his father lacked actual or apparent authority to consent to the police officers' request to search his belongings. The Court of Appeals held that defendant did not meet his burden of establishing a plain error affecting his substantial rights regarding the impropriety of the search and introduction of the allegedly illegal fruits of that search. The panel's analysis suggested that any error was not readily apparent from the record and thereforenot obvious under Carines. But defendant also challenged his counsel's effectiveness relating to the introduction of this evidence, specifically alleging that his counsel's failure to move to suppress the evidence constituted deficient performance and that it prejudiced him. The panel did not evaluate counsel's performance or the prejudice that resulted from it at all, instead relying on its plain-error analysis to conclude that the related ineffective-assistance claims must also fail. However, whether an error was obvious to the trial court is not an element of an ineffective-assistance claim. Given the centrality of the gun and ammunition to the prosecution's case, any ineffective assistance resulting in their admission might have prejudiced defendant. The proper analysis would have applied Strickland's two prongs and asked whether counsel's failure to object to the evidence constituted prejudicial deficient performance.
3. The Court of Appeals also erred by conflating the plain-error and ineffective-assistance standards when analyzing the admission of Fant's statements through the testimony of her fiancé's sister, Linda Wilkerson. Wilkerson testified that Fant said that defendant had been threatening Fant's family. Defendant contended on appeal that those hearsay statements were inadmissible and that the trial court erroneously admitted them as excited utterances. In its plain-error analysis of this issue, the Court of Appeals rejected defendant's argument because any error in admitting the testimony was not clear or obvious given defendant's failure to object. However, the fact that any error was not obvious did not justify rejecting defendant's ineffective-assistance claim; rather, the relevant questions for the Court were whether counsel's failure to object was deficient performance and whether it prejudiced defendant. The Court of Appeals alternatively concluded that any plain error in admitting Wilkerson's statements did not affect defendant's substantial rights, given that the statements were evidence of premeditation but the jury acquitted defendant of first-degree murder. This conclusion could have been reached only by properly applying the Strickland test, which requires considerations of defense counsel's actions and their effect in light of all of the evidence relating to that claim, including that developed at any evidentiary hearing, and that proper application was not evident in the Court's opinion.
Court of Appeals judgment reversed in part; case remanded to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings.
Justice CLEMENT took no part in the decision of this case.
BEFORE THE ENTIRE BENCH (except CLEMENT, J.)
This case requires us to consider whether a defendant's failure to satisfy the plain-error test in connection with a legal mistake by the trial court necessarily...
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