Felonious assault; AWIGBH; Jury instruction; Intent to inflict great bodily harm; M Crim JI 17.7; MCL 750.84; People v McKewen; The mutually exclusive verdicts doctrine; People v Davis (Davis II)

In an order in lieu of granting leave to appeal the Court of Appeals judgment (see eJournal #69821 in the 3/5/19 edition), the court reversed that part of the judgment that addressed the mutually exclusive verdicts doctrine and reinstated defendant’s conviction of felonious assault. The jury was instructed that to convict the defendant of AWIGBH it must find that, at the time of the assault, he “intended to cause great bodily harm.” However, the “jury was not instructed that it must find [he] acted without the intent to inflict great bodily harm with respect to felonious assault. Regardless of whether this state’s jurisprudence recognizes the principle of mutually exclusive verdicts, that issue is not presented here.” Because as “to the felonious-assault conviction, the jury never found . . . defendant acted without the intent to cause great bodily harm, a guilty verdict for that offense was not mutually exclusive to [his] guilty verdict for [AWIGBH], where the jury affirmatively found [he] acted with the intent to do great bodily harm.” As such, “the Court of Appeals erred by relying on the principle of mutually exclusive verdicts to vacate the defendant’s felonious-assault conviction.”