People v. Warren

• Citation: 462 Mich. 415,615 N.W.2d 691
• Decision Date: 11 July 2000
• Docket Number: Docket No. 111745, Calendar No. 2.
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Brian Andre WARREN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

615 N.W.2d 691

462 Mich. 415

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Brian Andre WARREN, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 111745, Calendar No. 2.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued December 7, 1999.

Decided July 11, 2000.

Jennifer M. Granholm, Attorney General, Thomas L. Casey, Solicitor General, Susan K. Mladenoff, Prosecuting Attorney, and Jennifer Kay Clark, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Battle Creek, MI, for people.

State Appellate Defender (by Lyle N. Marshall), Lansing, MI, for defendant-appellant.

Elwood Brown, President, John D. O'Hair, Prosecuting Attorney, and Timothy A. Baughman, Chief, Research, Training and Appeals, Detroit, MI, amicus curiae for Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan.

Opinion

MARILYN J. KELLY, J.

The Court of Appeals affirmed defendant's convictions for first-degree felony murder,¹ two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct (CSC I),² assault and battery,³ kidnapping,⁴ and unlawfully driving away an automobile (UDAA).⁵ We affirm the defendant's convictions, at the same time finding that the Court of Appeals rationale for its affirmance was in error.

I. FACTS

This factual summary was established at trial through the voluntary testimony of defendant's wife, Regina Warren, except where otherwise indicated.

On January 18, 1995, defendant prepared a candlelight dinner for Ms. Warren. She discovered that he had been drinking. Defendant's alcohol consumption had been a cause of continuing confrontation in their marriage. This occasion was no exception, and Ms. Warren returned upstairs without eating the dinner.

Defendant became angry at her behavior and reacted by threatening to tie her up and throw her in the basement. He found a plastic clothes line and set about binding her with it, telling her to stand up or something would happen to her. As she stood up, he held her hands behind her back. At that moment, the doorbell rang.

Ms. Warren pounded on the window to alert the person at the door to her plight. It was Ms. Warren's sister, who, when told of the situation, left the house, taking Ms. Warren and her children to her own house. From there, Ms. Warren and the children went with Ms. Warren's mother, Ms. Powell, to the latter's house.

Later in a bedroom at her mother's, Ms. Warren noticed that a window had been broken in an exterior door. Ms. Powell concluded that defendant had forced his way into the house. She had seen him walking outside earlier. They called the police. An officer arrived and checked the house for intruders. He did not discover defendant in the basement.

Later, Ms. Warren was awakened by her mother screaming from the basement for her to call the police. Ms. Warren rushed to the basement stairwell where she encountered her husband running up the stairs with a knife in his hand. She seized a mop and struck him with it.

Defendant told Ms. Warren that he loved her and would never hurt her. He wiped the knife with some material and put it down near the sink. Ms. Warren tried to determine if her mother had been injured, but defendant prevented it. He said he wanted her to feel what it is like to be beaten, and he punched her in the face.

He took her to a bedroom and continued to beat her on her face and body. He then forced her to perform fellatio on him and raped her vaginally.

The children awakened, and Ms. Warren asked to see them. Defendant agreed and went back to the basement for about five minutes. She repeated her request to see her mother. Defendant replied that, if she went downstairs, she would not return. He said her mother had stumbled over a basket and hit her head on the floor.

After sunrise, Ms. Warren asked defendant to leave the house to get some personal items for her and he agreed. Before leaving, he bound her, put a sock in her mouth and secured the sock by tying a cloth around her head.

Ms. Warren heard her mother's car start and depart. She freed her feet and ran to the basement. Turning on the light, she saw a large pool of blood. She screamed for her mother through the gag, but heard no response. She then ran out the front door with her hands and mouth still tied. A neighbor let her in and allowed her to call the police.

The neighbor described her as disheveled, shaky, and emotional. Ms. Warren said she had been raped, believed her mother had been killed in the basement of her house, and expressed concern for her children.

When the police arrived, they found Ms. Powell dead, lying in a large pool of blood in her basement. An autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed eight times.

A police detective, gathering evidence at the scene, collected a beer can with defendant's fingerprints on it and a large butcher knife. He found fabric that appeared to be discolored by blood, as though an object had been wiped on it. He also collected glass from a broken window.

Defendant was driving Ms. Powell's car on a highway out of town when the police arrested him. He had cuts and scrapes on his hands. Stains appearing to be blood were on his pants. After waiving his Miranda⁶ rights, he gave a self-incriminating statement that the police videotaped. He stated that, upon returning with supplies, he observed a fire truck in front of Ms. Powells' house. He turned around, stopped briefly at his house and took a back road out of town.

Defendant filed a pretrial motion claiming that the spousal privilege statute ⁷ prevented his wife from testifying about the facts supporting felony-murder, first-degree home invasion⁸ and UDAA. The trial judge denied the motion by written opinion, finding that Ms. Warren could testify about defendant's crimes against her mother. She had a cause of action under the wrongful death statute.⁹ It followed that a personal wrong had been done to Ms. Warren by her husband, and she could testify pursuant to the "personal wrong" exception to the spousal privilege.¹⁰ During trial, the defense renewed its objection, in order to preserve it in the record.

A jury convicted defendant on all charged counts. The home invasion conviction was vacated at sentencing, because it was the felony underlying the felony-murder conviction.

The Court of Appeals affirmed. It agreed that defendant's spouse could testify against him, pursuant to the personal wrong exception. It held that she could testify about those crimes that were committed against her mother and her mother's property. It found that such evidence provided a relevant context for the remaining crimes that qualified as personal wrongs. 228 Mich.App. 336, 342-343, 578 N.W.2d 692 (1998).

It noted that Ms. Warren's testimony about seeing defendant run up the basement stairs with a knife after her mother screamed implicated defendant in the home invasion and murder charges. However, it found this testimony admissible, as it also explained why Ms. Warren did not resist his later acts of assault, rape, and confinement. Ms. Warren's testimony that she heard defendant drive away in her mother's automobile implicated defendant in the UDAA charge. However, the Court of Appeals found that the testimony was admissible as pertinent to the kidnapping charge, because it explained why defendant bound and gagged Ms. Warren.

The Court of Appeals concluded that all Ms. Warren's testimony was properly admitted because "[a] party should `be able to give the jury an intelligible presentation of the full context in which disputed events took place.' People v. Sholl, 453 Mich. 730, 741, 556 N.W.2d 851 (1996)." 228 Mich. App. at 342, 578 N.W.2d 692. The crimes that did not fit within the exception were blended with and explained the circumstances of those crimes that did qualify. Id. at 742, 556 N.W.2d 851.

We granted defendant's application for leave to appeal. 460 Mich. 851, 595 N.W.2d 858 (1999).

II. MICHIGAN'S SPOUSAL PRIVILEGE STATUTE

At the time of the events in this case, Michigan's spousal privilege statute provided in relevant part:¹¹

(1) A husband shall not be examined as a witness for or against his wife without her consent or a wife for or against her husband without his consent, except as follows:

* * * * * *

(d) In a cause of action that grows out of a personal wrong or injury done by one to the other.... [MCL 600.2162; MSA 27A.2162 (emphasis added).]

The statute vested the privilege in the nonwitness spouse. The privilege could be asserted only while the spouses were legally married, and it precluded all testimony regardless of whether the events occurred before or during the marriage. People v. Hamacher, 432 Mich. 157, 161, 438 N.W.2d 43 (1989); People v. Wadkins, 101 Mich. App. 272, 282, 300 N.W.2d 542 (1980).¹²

A. People v. Quanstrom¹³

Over one hundred years ago, in People v. Quanstrom, this Court rendered a narrow interpretation of the personal injury exception to the spousal privilege. It found that a wife could not testify in her husband's prosecution for bigamy. The Court read "personal [wrong or] injury" to mean "violence, either actual or constructive, to the person." Id. at 256, 53 N.W. 165. "If not a crime against her, it certainly is not a wrong which is personal to her." Id. at 260, 53 N.W. 165.

The Michigan Legislature later amended the spousal privilege statute specifically to include a bigamy exception.¹⁴ More recently, in People v. Butler,¹⁵ this Court effectively limited Quanstrom's narrow reading of the exception to cases of bigamy. Id. at 439, 424 N.W.2d 264. In that case, the defendant was charged with arson of a dwelling house ¹⁶ after setting his wife's apartment afire. She was allowed to testify against him under the personal wrong exception, even though she had not been physically injured. The Court concluded:

We see no reason ... to interpret the "personal wrong or injury" exception in the narrow fashion stated by Quanstrom. [Id. at 439, 424 N.W.2d 264.]

As the bigamy exception had been added to the spousal privilege statute when Butler was issued, Butler left Quanstrom with no precedential value, the holding...