People v. Williams, 286097
| Decision Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Docket Number | No. 291335,No. 286097,286097,291335 |
| Parties | PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TERRANCE JAMAL WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant. PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JOSEPH MICHAEL GREEN, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US |
UNPUBLISHED
Wayne Circuit Court LC No. 07-010617-02-FC
Wayne Circuit Court LC No. 07-010617-01-FC
Before: K. F. KELLY, P.J., and METER and GLEICHER, JJ.
Defendants Terrance Jamal Williams and Joseph Michael Green are brothers who were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for their roles in a drive-by shooting during which Carl Hairston was killed and Jerrance Lewis received life-threatening injuries. Defendants jointly stood trial before separate juries over a three-month period in 2008. Green received an 11-day retrial after his original jury deadlocked. Both defendants received post-conviction evidentiary hearings to determine the necessity for a new trial. After these long and tortured proceedings, the trial court allowed defendants' convictions and sentences to stand. We affirm.
In Docket No. 286097, we reject Williams' pursuit of a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. Although the ballistic evidence presented at Williams' trial has since been debunked, the prosecution presented significant independent evidence to support Williams' convictions. We also reject Williams' Sixth Amendment public trial challenge as the court cited compelling reasons to close the courtroom during a portion of the trial. We agree with Williams that the trial court should have made case-specific findings before repositioning Lewis on thewitness stand so he could avoid the gaze of defendants and their attorneys. However, any resultant violation of Williams' right to confront Lewis is harmless in light of the remaining evidence. As neither the public trial nor confrontation challenges merit relief, Williams' challenge to counsel's failure to object also must fail.
In Docket No. 291335, we reject Green's challenge to the admission on retrial of Lewis's testimony from the original trial. Lewis adamantly asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, rendering him "unavailable" to testify on retrial and triggering this hearsay exception. We also reject Green's challenge to the performance of counsel on retrial. Counsel simply was not ineffective in failing to call potential defense witnesses who provided completely incredible or unhelpful testimony.
In the early morning hours of May 15, 2007, Hairston drove his mother's Chevy Tahoe to pick up Lewis and Thomas Cook. Although Hairston and Lewis were under 21, the trio travelled to the Perfect Beat nightclub near the corner of Fort Street and Schaefer Road in southwest Detroit. They left the club shortly before closing, reentered their vehicle and traversed Fort Street in front of the club for several minutes while listening to loud music. Williams (then age 20) approached the Tahoe from behind while driving a light blue minivan. Williams pulled parallel to the driver's side of the Tahoe. The rear, passenger-side sliding door of the minivan opened and Green (then age 22) fired more than 20 shots from an AK-47 at the Tahoe. The minivan collided with the Tahoe and the minivan's door was torn off in the fray. Hairston was struck with several bullets and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Lewis was shot numerous times in the abdomen and side, required three surgeries to repair internal damage, and was hospitalized for a month. Cook escaped unharmed. He fled the scene and was only secured as a trial witness through the significant efforts of the prosecutor and law enforcement officers.
Investigating officers soon received an anonymous tip that "Joe Green" was involved in the shooting, but they were unable to locate any suspects on that information alone. Investigators then discovered a burned minivan, missing its sliding rear door, abandoned in a field. The door recovered on Fort Street perfectly matched the minivan. The officers traced the vehicle's identification number and learned that it was registered to Juanita Williams, the mother of defendant Williams and defendant "Joe Green." When Lewis recovered sufficiently to speak to the officers, he specifically identified defendants by name as his attackers. Lewis indicated that he had seen defendants driving the minivan in the past and clearly saw their faces during the shooting. Lewis then confirmed defendants' identities through a photographic line-up.
Green and Williams had a long-standing feud with Hairston and Lewis. Lewis admitted that the two groups fought each time they met, sometimes with weapons. The parties stipulated that Williams had previously shot Lewis in the hand. Cornelius Wade, a jailhouse informant, testified that Williams confessed to the drive-by shooting while housed in the Wayne County Jail. According to Wade, a man name Armond hired Williams and Green to kill Lewis and Hairston to avenge the robbery of Armond's carwash (which served as a front for a drug-dealing and gambling operation). Wade alleged that a man named Aaron Campbell was at the Perfect Beat on the night of the shooting and contacted defendants by telephone to alert them of Hairston's and Lewis's presence. The prosecution also presented evidence that someone threw afirebomb into and fired a barrage of bullets at Lewis's home the night before defendants' preliminary examination.
Defendants asserted alibis in support of their defenses. Williams also presented evidence from his friends Jamaal and Jameel Croft, who claimed to have been standing outside the Perfect Beat at the time of the shooting, and asserted that the minivan's occupants were heavy-set Mexican or Caucasian men. Defendants attempted to establish that their minivan had been stolen earlier that evening from an apartment complex in Lincoln Park.1 Williams' jury did not believe his defense theory and convicted him of first-degree premeditated murder, MCL 750.316, and assault with intent to murder, MCL 750.83. The court sentenced Williams to life without parole for the murder conviction and 20 to 30 years' imprisonment for the assault charge.
After the original trial, the Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory retested the shell casings found outside the Perfect Beat and Lewis's home. The state lab could neither confirm nor deny whether any of the casings were fired from a single weapon. The investigator testified that AK-47s are loosely tooled resulting in discrepancies between shells fired from a single gun. Accordingly, it remained possible that the shell casings had been fired from a single weapon.
Green proceeded to retrial after which the jury convicted him of first-degree premeditated murder, assault with intent to murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony (felony-firearm), MCL 750.227b. The court sentenced Green to concurrent terms of life without parole and 15 to 30 years' imprisonment for his murder and assault convictions to be served consecutive to a two-year term for felony-firearm.
In the meantime, Williams had appealed his convictions as of right. We held Williams' appeal in abeyance pending the State Lab's analysis of the ballistic evidence. People v Williams, unpublished order of the Court of Appeals, entered April 1, 2009 (Docket No. 286097). We then remanded for the trial court to consider whether Williams was entitled to a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. People v Williams, unpublished order of the Court of Appeals, entered January 15, 2010 (Docket No. 286097). The trial court concluded that the exchange of ballistic evidence would not make a different result probable on retrial and therefore denied Williams' motion for a new trial.
Green also sought a new trial, but based on the ineffective assistance of counsel at his second trial. The trial court rejected Green's claim and this consolidated appeal followed.
Williams challenges the trial court's denial of his motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. We review the trial court's decision for an abuse of discretion. People v Terrell, 289 Mich App 553, 558-559; 797 NW2d 684 (2010).
For a new trial to be granted on the basis of newly discovered evidence, a defendant must show that: (1) "the evidence itself, not merely its materiality, was newly discovered"; (2) "the newly discovered evidence was not cumulative"; (3) "the party could not, using reasonable diligence, have discovered and produced the evidence at trial"; and (4) the new evidence makes a different result probable on retrial. People v Johnson, 451 Mich 115, 118 n 6; 545 NW2d 637 (1996); MCR 6.508(D). [People v Cress, 468 Mich 678, 692; 664 NW2d 174 (2003).]
At the first trial, Detroit Police Officer David Pauch, who was assigned to the Crime Lab Firearms and Tool Mark Identification Unit, testified as an expert in firearms and tool mark identification. He examined spent casings found at the Perfect Beat crime scene and casings found at Lewis's home after the firebombing. The ammunition was categorized as 7.62x39 caliber bullets with identical lot identification numbers that are used in assault rifles such as AK-47s. Pauch testified that five of the casings found at the Perfect Beat were fired from the same weapon and that the same weapon had fired the five casings found at Lewis's home.
During closing argument, Prosecutor Kam Towns argued:
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