Court Opinion

ID: 9543305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:44:11.167151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:06.590153
License: Public Domain

Per Curiam.
Defendant is charged with first-degree felony murder, MCL 750.316; MSA 28.548. A factual synopsis discloses that defendant allegedly perpetrated the homicide during an armed robbery-burglary.
Prior to commencement of trial, defendant moved to have the results of certain chemical tests excluded from trial. The motion was granted, whereupon the prosecutor brought the present interlocutory appeal. The prosecutor asserts that the following evidence should be available at trial.
During the episode, the victim, an elderly woman, was stabbed in the back with a knife. She then fell to the floor, face down, with the knife *50handle protruding from her back. The defendant then attempted to push the knife deeper into the victim’s body with the heel of his shoe. At this point, blood gushed from the victim onto the heel of the defendant’s shoe. The above testimony will come from defendant’s accomplice who stands convicted in this episode following a separate trial.
Following defendant’s arrest, blood-grouping tests were run on the dried blood on defendant’s shoe. These tests showed that the dried blood was type A. It is known that neither defendant nor his accomplice has type A blood. It is known that the victim’s blood was type A.
In granting the defendant’s motion, the trial court relied on People v Sturdivant, 91 Mich App 128; 283 NW2d 669 (1979), and the authorities cited therein. One of the issues discussed in Sturdivant, i.e., the admissibility of the results of blood grouping tests in criminal prosecutions, is not a novel one to this jurisdiction. Some conflict is noted in the case law. See People v Spencer, 93 Mich App 605; 286 NW2d 879 (1979). We need not attempt to reconcile these cases in this matter, however.
In the case at bar, the purpose of the proffered evidence is twofold. It is first offered to prove that the blood did not come from either of the perpetrators. It is also offered to corroborate the accomplice’s testimony as to the facts surrounding the homicide.
This Court finds that the evidence is relevant under the definition of that term in MRE 401. The evidence would tend to obviate the possibility of perjurious testimony in the first instance and, in the second instance, would certainly corroborate the accomplice’s testimony as to the method by which the homicide was perpetrated and by whom. *51As such, the motion to exclude the evidence should have been denied.
Reversed and remanded for trial. We retain no jurisdiction.