Opinion ID: 4192155
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: defendant’s character evidence

Text: Defendant called only three witnesses during the trial. The first was his sister, Geraldine Johnson. She testified that defendant graduated from high school in 1971 and then worked at General Motors before enlisting in the United States Army from 1974 to 1977, after which he returned to Highland Park and worked at Chrysler. Defendant’s second witness was Jo Ann Davenport, a former girlfriend who had dated defendant for about a year around 1972, 11 years before the murder. She testified that defendant had not abused her during their relationship. A few years after their relationship ended, she had moved away from Highland Park. She did not stay in touch with defendant but would occasionally see him in passing when she visited her family back home. She could not remember the last time she had seen him. She testified that when she had visited her old neighborhood, she had heard nothing about defendant’s abusing any girlfriends in the early 1980s. Defendant’s third witness, Kim Harden, described defendant as being “like a cousin” to her because their parents were very close. They grew up on the same block, and although Harden had moved to California for school three years before the murder, she returned to Michigan on occasion, including during the summers. She testified that during these return trips, she would visit defendant’s family home daily, but she would only see defendant if he happened to be visiting his family home. She saw defendant with Kountz about three or four times during the 1980s, and not once did she observe 10 verbal or physical abuse. She described defendant as a peaceful person who did not believe in violence. She also testified that during the 1980s, defendant did not have a reputation for being an abusive person. The jury heard all of this evidence; the error was in failing to properly instruct the jurors on the use of the good-character evidence: You may consider this evidence, together with all the other evidence in the case, in deciding whether the defendant committed the crime with which (he / she) is charged. Evidence of good character alone may sometimes create a reasonable doubt in your minds and lead you to find the defendant not guilty. [M Crim JI 5.8a(1).][8] We note that the jury was instructed that “[a] reasonable doubt is a fair, honest doubt growing out of the evidence or the lack of evidence,” that “[y]ou must think about all of the evidence and decide each piece of evidence, what it means and how important you think it is. That includes whether you believe what each of the witnesses said,” and that “it is your job to decide what the facts of the case are. You must decide which witnesses you believe and how important you think their testimony is.” We cannot conclude that the absence of the good-character instruction made the difference in the outcome. Or to put it differently, we cannot say that if only the jury had been properly instructed, the verdict would have been altered because of this goodcharacter evidence. In terms of character evidence alone, the prosecution’s evidence of defendant’s past violence toward Kountz was far stronger. The victim’s sister, Carrie 8 Under MCR 2.512(D)(2), “[p]ertinent portions of the instructions approved by the . . . Committee on Model Criminal Jury Instructions . . . must be given in each action in which jury instructions are given” if they are applicable, they accurately state the applicable law, and they are requested by a party. 11 Weathers, who had lived in the house for a time, described defendant’s relationship with Kountz as “brutal,” testifying that she saw defendant hit Kountz “just about every other day.” One of Kountz’s daughters testified that once, when Kountz asked defendant if Weathers’ sister could move back into the house, defendant refused, demonstrating his anger by stabbing a butcher knife in the middle of a bed. Kountz’s daughters also testified to defendant’s abuse toward their mom, including rape and repeated instances of other violence. George Arnold, who had lived in the house for less than a year around 1981 or 1982, testified that he saw defendant hit Kountz and that once, when he had tried to intervene, defendant had struck him. Jeffrey Trent, a neighbor, testified that defendant and Kountz had a violent relationship and that on one occasion defendant asked Kountz to look under the hood of his car; when she bent over, he kicked her and slammed the hood on the upper half of her body. Kountz’s long-time next-door neighbors, Carolyn and Camille Rhodman, similarly testified to observing defendant abuse Kountz on multiple occasions. At face value, the prosecution’s evidence of bad character, offered by those who had many chances to observe defendant in the early 1980s, far outweighed defendant’s good-character evidence, which was both substantively weaker and was offered by witnesses who had little contact with defendant during the relevant time period and who no longer lived in the same city. And, of course, the jury did hear and could weigh defendant’s proffered good-character evidence; the only error was that the jurors were not instructed on character evidence in particular, including that, if they believed this evidence, it was permissible for them to conclude, based on this evidence alone, that there was reasonable doubt. 12 The Court of Appeals erred by focusing on the instruction’s importance to defendant’s defense rather than focusing on its importance to the verdict. Compare Lyles (On Remand), unpub op at 3 (“In effect, this error by the trial court eviscerated the significance of defendant’s character evidence, which was crucial to his defense, and wholly undermined his effort to establish that he was a peaceful person who could not have committed such a vicious murder.”), with Lukity, 460 Mich at 495-496 (“[A] preserved, nonconstitutional error is not a ground for reversal unless after an examination of the entire cause, it shall affirmatively appear that it is more probable than not that the error was outcome determinative.”) (quotation marks omitted). But even the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that “[d]efendant’s best defense . . . was his evidence regarding his peaceful character,” 9 Lyles (On Remand), unpub op at 5, is belied by the fact that defense counsel did not think it important to make a good-character argument in either the defendant’s opening or closing arguments. 10 The prosecution argues, here and in the Court of Appeals, that the failure to include the good-character argument in opening or 9 Despite its conclusion that the instructional error “eviscerated the significance of defendant’s character evidence, which was crucial to his defense,” Lyles (On Remand), unpub op at 3, the Court of Appeals did not recount this crucial evidence or describe it at all other than in this one sentence: “In particular, in contrast to the violence described by several of the witnesses, defendant presented evidence of his peaceful character in the form of reputation and opinion testimony from a woman who had known defendant all her life and lived on defendant’s street for many years.” Lyles (On Remand), unpub op at 2. 10 Instead, defendant argued that the prosecution’s evidence of domestic violence should not be believed because there were no police reports, the victim (Louise Kountz) did not testify (she had passed away), and Kountz’s daughters had incentives to lie. The rest of defendant’s opening and closing statements consisted of pointing out the lack of physical evidence and the age of the case. 13 closing arguments is relevant in considering the importance of the omitted instruction to the defense theory. The Court of Appeals dismissed the prosecution’s argument, reasoning that “[r]egardless of whether counsel emphasized this evidence during closing, a properly instructed jury should have been told that the character evidence could, on its own, create a reasonable doubt.” Lyles (On Remand), unpub op at 4 n 1. We agree that a properly instructed jury would have received the instruction. But that goes to whether there was error, not to whether the error was harmless. Even if the Court of Appeals were right, however, that defendant’s good-character evidence was his best defense, defendant was permitted to introduce this evidence. The instructional error is not reversible error unless the defense likely would have succeeded at trial. 11 See Lukity, 460 Mich at 495-496. Given the evidence at trial, it is not “more 11 The Court of Appeals relied on two of our cases for its conclusion that there was reversible error here because “[b]y failing to give the key part of the instruction requested by defendant, the trial court prevented the jury from having the opportunity to properly weigh defendant’s character evidence.” Lyles (On Remand), unpub op at 4. The Court of Appeals failed to note that the first, People v Silver, 466 Mich 386; 646 NW2d 150 (2002) (opinion by TAYLOR, J.), is a fractured decision of our Court and that the opinion from which it quoted represents the views of only two Justices. As for the second, People v Rodriguez, 463 Mich 466, 474; 620 NW2d 13 (2000), the Court of Appeals relied on our statement that the instruction was “crucial to the defendant’s defense and was clearly supported by the evidence.” That was not the extent of our analysis of the instructional error in Rodriguez, however. The defendant was convicted of evading the use tax on a van that he claimed he planned to sell at auction after repairing; the requested instruction would have informed the jury that property purchased for resale is exempt from the use tax. We concluded that “[u]nder [MCL 205.94(c)], the defendant was—if a properly instructed jury were to believe his version of the facts—exempt from the tax.” Id. at 472. Thus, “[t]here is no question that the error undermined the reliability of the verdict . . . .” Id. at 474. Accordingly, we examined “the entire cause,” MCL 769.26, and determined that the specific circumstances of that case rendered the instructional error outcome-determinative. Rodriguez does not stand for the proposition that any instructional error that affects an issue that is “crucial to the defendant’s 14 probable than not” that the outcome would have been different if the jury had been properly instructed on how it could consider the evidence defendant offered regarding his good character. See id. at 496. Therefore, the Court of Appeals erred by holding that defendant had met the Lukity harmless-error standard. 12