Court Opinion

ID: 9591502
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:04:39.092082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:20:17.329321
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(dissenting). The majority states persuasively that it would have been prejudicially unfair and error requiring reversal with respect to defendant, Ferandal Shabazz Reed’s codefendant, Willie O. Servant, to have instructed the jury at their joint trial that, because Servant was charged as an accomplice, it should examine his testimony “closely and be very careful about accepting it”; to think about whether his testimony is corroborated by other evidence; to consider, when deciding whether to believe Servant, whether he gave “testimony falsely slanted . . . because of [Servant’s] own interest”; and in general to consider Servant’s testimony “more cautiously.”1
Thus, I am inclined to agree with the majority’s decision insofar as it reverses the Court of Appeals on the narrow question whether the trial court should have instructed sua sponte on accomplice testimony.
The potential prejudicial effect as to Servant of an accomplice instruction concerning his testimony does *697not reduce the prejudicial unfairness to Reed in denying him the benefit of such a cautionary instruction.
Codefendant Servant, facing a mandatory nonparolable life sentence, was under enormous pressure to save himself by shifting the blame to someone else. That pressure was at least as great as the pressure on a codefendant who has the safety net of charge or sentence concessions granted by a prosecutor in exchange for his testimony. There is, thus, no less need for a cautionary instruction simply because Servant was a codefendant and had not been offered concessions in exchange for his testimony by the prosecutor.
i
The unfairness to Reed resulting from the failure to caution the jury on the dangers of accomplice testimony, and the separate unfairness to Servant had such an instruction been given, could have been avoided by separate trials or possibly by separate juries.
Both Reed and Servant sought separate trials. The Court of Appeals, on first consideration of Servant’s appeal, ruled that a separate trial should have been granted, but, on remand, another panel ruled differently. Servant’s application for leave to appeal is currently pending before this Court.
The Court of Appeals did not reach the separate trial issue in the instant case because it ruled, pursuant to People v McCoy, 392 Mich 231; 220 NW2d 456 (1974), that an accomplice instruction should have been given. Reed’s cross appeal regarding the issue of *698the failure to sever and other issues is pending resolution on the McCoy issue.2
n
In People v Hana, 447 Mich 325; 524 NW2d 682 (1994), the Court considered the separate trials issue in the context of potential conflicting and antagonistic testimony and defenses of codefendants at a joint trial. The focus was not on evidence probative of the defendant’s guilt admissible only against a codefendant. See id. at 362.
m
The unfairness of the joint trials — which the majority holds precluded a cautionary instruction on accomplice testimony because that would have prejudiced Servant — was exacerbated at the joint trial by reading to the jury the extrajudicial hearsay statement of Servant accusing Reed of instigating the slaying of the victim, Isaac Robbins, Jr., and by reading Reed’s extrajudicial statement accusing Servant of being the shooter.
Servant’s and Reed’s extrajudicial statements were not admissible under the hearsay exception for admissions against penal interest.3 In People v Poole, 444 Mich 151, 161; 506 NW2d 505 (1993), this Court held that a statement against penal interest may be admissible, although not against the penal interest of *699the declarant, under limited circumstances. Such circumstances would not include situations where the declarant is responding to police interrogation and attempts to mitigate the degree of his own involvement by shifting responsibility to another person,
• as did Servant when he acknowledged that he was the shooter but sought to minimize his responsibility by asserting that Reed instigated the shooting by demanding that Servant shoot Robbins without further delay;
• as did Reed, when he acknowledged that he participated in the attempted robbery, but sought to minimize his responsibility by asserting that he reproached Servant for shooting Robbins.4
IV
The central, possibly the only, issue at the joint trial was who actually shot Robbins. Both Reed and Servant admitted their participation in the attempted robbery. But under People v Aaron, 409 Mich 672; 299 NW2d 304 (1980), their participation in the attempted robbery did not necessarily make the killing murder. Since Aaron, the jury must be instructed that it cannot infer intent to kill or malice (intent to inflict great bodily harm or wanton or wilful disregard of the likelihood that the natural tendency of the defendant’s behavior is to cause death or great bodily harm), from participation in a robbery, or attempted robbery alone.
*700Under Aaron, the question of guilt or innocence of murder turned on whether Reed or Servant, or both, acted alone or in a concert of action, to kill Robbins, or, alternatively, whether the culpability of one or both (if Johnson was the shooter) was limited to participation in the attempted robbery.
A
On that central issue, Reed’s statement that Servant was the shooter, exculpating Reed from involvement in the murder, destroyed Servant’s possible ability to persuade the jury to accept Servant’s trial testimony that Johnson was the shooter, and Servant’s explanation of why he had falsely accepted responsibility for the shooting.5
B
There was no direct evidence that Reed was involved in the killing other than Servant’s statement that Reed had urgently demanded that Servant shoot Robbins without further delay.6
The prosecutor in effect acknowledged the importance to the prosecution’s case against Reed, of Servant’s statement accusing Reed of being the instigator of the killing by stressing that accusation in his clos*701ing arguments. The error in admitting Servant’s statement at a joint trial against Reed was not harmless.7
v
Reed’s cross appeal should be granted, and disposition of this case deferred until this Court, after full briefing and opportunity for argument, decides whether Servant’s statement was admissible against Reed at a joint trial, and whether Reed’s statement against Servant, inadmissible under Poole and Bruton v United States, 391 US 123; 88 S Ct 1620; 20 L Ed 2d 476 (1968), against Servant, was harmless error, and *702whether Reed and Servant were entitled to separate trials.8
VI
I would, therefore, grant leave to appeal in Servant, and grant Reed’s cross appeal, and defer disposition of this case until decision in Servant and decision on Reed’s cross appeal.
Cavanagh, J., concurred with Levin, J.
Weaver, J., took no part in the decision of this case.

 The quoted words are taken from CJI2d 5.6. See majority, n 4 for text.

 No cross appeal was necessary to argue on other grounds in support of the decision of the Court of Appeals ordering a new trial, especially since the Court of Appeals did not rule on the other grounds advanced for reversal of the conviction. This Court should consider alternative arguments urged by Reed in support of affirmance of the decision of the Court of Appeals before reversing the Court of Appeals.

 The statements were introduced in the prosecution’s case in chief.

 Reed claimed that he was not in the room with Servant and Robbins when he heard the shots and then returned to the room.

 Reed did not testify. See Bruton v United States, 391 US 123; 88 S Ct 1620; 20 L Ed 2d 476 (1968), and Cruz v New York, 481 US 186; 107 S Ct 1714; 95 L Ed 2d 162 (1987).

 Servant’s testimony that Reed followed Johnson when he left Reed’s parents’ home does not show that Reed was involved in a concert of action with Johnson to shoot Robbins. It may show only that Reed may have been present when Johnson assertedly shot Robbins. Be that as it may, the prosecutor’s theory was that Servant shot Robbins, not that Johnson shot Robbins.

 To be sure, Servant testified that when he and Reed planned to rob Robbins, Reed said that it would be necessary to loll Robbins so he could not come back at them. Servant claimed that he then left Reed’s home to avoid being involved in killing Robbins, and that he returned some time later to the Reed home, heard shots, saw Robbins run out after having been shot, followed by Roy (Stinky) Johnson and Reed. That testimony does indeed support inferences that Reed may have been involved in killing Robbins. But it is not direct evidence (in contrast with Servant’s extrajudicial accusation) that he, in fact, was involved. Johnson, according to Servant, not Reed, had the .25 caliber gun in his hand, and was about to shoot Servant when Reed prevailed on Johnson not to do so.
The prosecutor’s theory was that Servant, not Johnson, was the shooter. Johnson was not charged. The jury convicted Servant and, thus, rejected his testimony that he left the Reed home when Reed said that it would be necessary to kill Robbins.
I recognize that the jury was entitled to believe that Reed did say that it would be necessary to kill Robbins, but, absent Servant’s extrajudicial statement to the police that Reed told him to “do it, do it” (i.e., kill Robbins), the jury was more likely to reject all Servant’s testimony as it was to believe part of it. (In convicting Servant of first-degree murder, the jury apparently rejected his testimony.)
The extrajudicial statement accusing Reed of being the instigator in hollering “do it, do it” was highly prejudicial bootstrapping, and not harmless, whatever the level of confidence an appellate court must have that error is harmless before it can appropriately rule that error had no effect on the jury’s verdict.

 If there are errors of preservation by trial or appellate counsel, Reed and Servant should not on that basis be deprived of a fair trial conducted in accordance with the rules of law.