Court Opinion

ID: 9695902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:31:06.56827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:17.254414
License: Public Domain

Cavanagh, J.
(concurring). I concur with the separate opinion of my brother Levin. However, I do not join in his conclusion that a remand to the Court of Appeals is warranted. Identification testimony of three eyewitnesses, fingerprints, identification of defendant’s car, and the Video Bin business card found in defendant’s vehicle is sufficient evidence to satisfy me that any error in the admission of testimony regarding the circumstances surrounding defendant’s subsequent arrest was harmless. Accordingly, I concur with the majority in reversal.
Levin, J.
(separate opinion). I agree with the majority that Hall’s possession of a shotgun may1 have been "admissible in the same way that evidence of defendant’s ownership of a rust-colored Nova like the one used in the robbery was admissible.”2 On the assumption that the evidence was so admissible, there was no abuse of discretion in allowing witnesses to testify that, as stated by the majority, they actually "saw the defendant in possession of a brown bag like the one in which the shotgun was found. Mr. Henry testified that from the way defendant carried the bag, he thought there was a gun in it. Mrs. Hoffman saw the defendant place the bag into his car. Mr. *590Henry had earlier seen the defendant sitting in the driver’s seat of the car.”3
I write separately because, in all events, there was no need, in order to establish Hall’s possession and control of the shotgun, for Robert Hoffman to testify that Hall’s conduct immediately before he was arrested was such as to so arouse Hoffman’s suspicion that he had asked his wife, Karen Hoffman, to call the police. There was no need for Henry to testify that he had taken the license plate number of the Nova or for Karen Hoffman to testify regarding the events that led her to telephone the police.
The prosecutor could have fully established the defendant’s knowing possession and control of both the shotgun and the car without the testimony of Henry, and of Robert and Karen Hoffman, tending to show that Hall was acting as if he were planning another robbery.
I would vacate the opinion of the Court of Appeals4 and remand the case to it for a determination of whether the testimony tending to show that Hall was planning another robbery was harm*591less error, as the people contended in their petition for rehearing in the Court of Appeals.5
Archer, J., concurred with Levin, J.

 But see People v Howard, 391 Mich 597, 607; 218 NW2d 20 (1974) (Levin, J., concurring), stating that guns found some time after the commission of a crime that might have been used to commit the crime are not invariably admissible. The shotgun there, as here, was not "part of a chain of circumstantial evidence which in the aggregate [was] sufficient to support a verdict or finding of guilty.” Id., p 610.

 Ante, p 583.

 Ante, p 582. I do not therefore contend that it would have sufficed "for the prosecution simply to have stated that the gun had been found by the police in a car that had been recently occupied by the defendant.” Ante, p 584.

 The opinion of the Court of Appeals is unpublished and hence the MRE 404(b) analysis of the Court of Appeals is not precedentially binding under the rule of stare decisis. MCR 7.215(C)(1).
It is therefore sufficient to say that MRE 404(b) is inapplicable in the instant case, and there is no need to consider in the abstract the possible application of MRE 404(b) in other cases.
I do, however, agree with the majority that the applicable rules are MRE 401, defining relevant evidence; MRE 402, providing that relevant evidence is generally admissible; and MRE 403, providing that relevant evidence may be excluded on grounds of prejudice, confusion, or waste of time.

 The issue whether there was harmless error should not be considered for the first time on appeal to this Court.