Prosecutorial misconduct; People v. Brown; People v. Seals; People v. Watson; “Plain error” review; People v. Gaines; People v. Carines; Effect of curative jury instructions; Claim the prosecutor argued facts not in evidence; People v. Unger; Calling on jurors to use their common sense & everyday experience; People v. Simon; Elements of felonious assault; People v. Chambers; “Vouching”; People v. Rodriguez; Arguing that a witness is credible; People v. Dobek; Alleged appeal to the jury’s civic duty; People v. Thomas; People v. Bahoda; Sufficiency of the evidence to disprove the defendant’s self-defense claim; People v. Heflin; People v. Guarjado; “Reasonableness”; People v. Orlewicz; The Self-Defense Act (MCL 780.971 et seq.); MCL 780.972(2); Principle that one “who uses excessive force or acts as the initial aggressor does not act in justifiable self-defense”; People v. Dupree; When an aggressor may still claim self-defense; People v. Kemp

[Unpublished opinion.] Rejecting the defendant’s prosecutorial misconduct claims and holding that the prosecution presented sufficient evidence to refute his self-defense claim, the court affirmed his felonious assault and felony-firearm convictions. He asserted that the prosecutor argued facts not in evidence. However, the court concluded that the prosecutor did not actually argue that defendant shot the victim (M). “There was no question that defendant’s conduct was restricted to punching” M and then shoving the gun in M’s face, “two actions that the prosecutor referenced time and again throughout the trial and that the jurors had seen for themselves numerous times on the gas station video. Imprecise though his language may have been, the prosecutor was simply remarking that it was reasonable” for M “to fear being shot, and thus, that defendant intended” to put him “in reasonable apprehension of an immediate battery.” The prosecutor “was simply drawing a reasonable inference—that defendant intended” to make M “fear being shot—from facts firmly in evidence. This is a permissible strategy during closing argument.” Further, the prosecutor’s comments about M during closing argument “did not constitute improper vouching.” The prosecutor also did not encourage the jury “to convict defendant based on the abstract principles that he was generally an irresponsible gun owner and that the jury should encourage responsible gun ownership through a guilty verdict.” Rather, his argument was specifically based “on the video, the testimony, and the reasonable inference that defendant acted as the aggressor, rather than in self-defense, on that particular occasion.” As to the sufficiency of the evidence, the court held that the jury could have reasonably concluded that defendant did not act in self-defense. The “video evidence belies defendant’s claim that he honestly and reasonably feared serious injury or death” at M’s hands. Further, “the jury could reasonably have concluded that defendant was the aggressor, and there is no evidence suggesting” that he withdrew or notified M of the withdrawal.