Ineffective assistance of counsel; Trial strategy; Failure to make a futile objection; Failure to secure PTSD/insanity evidence; MCL 768.21a; People v Armstrong; Diminished-capacity defense; People v Carpenter; Failure to prevent a witness from violating a sequestration order; MRE 615; Jury instructions; Waiver of a challenge to a curative instruction on sequestration; People v Hershey; Sentencing; Proportionality of mandatory 25-year minimum as a fourth habitual offender; MCL 769.12(1)(a) & (6)(c); People v Burkett; Ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing; Failure to present mitigation evidence

The court held that: (1) defendant’s ineffective-assistance claims failed, (2) any challenge to the sequestration instruction was waived, and (3) the mandatory fourth-habitual 25-year minimum sentences were proportionate. In 2019, the then-50-year-old defendant entered the 66-year-old victim’s camper and assaulted him. He was convicted of first-degree home invasion and AWIGBH. The trial court sentenced him as a fourth-offense habitual offender to concurrent terms of 25 to 40 years for both offenses. On appeal, the court rejected his trial-stage ineffectiveness claim premised on lack of PTSD expert evidence. It noted counsel sought competency and criminal-responsibility evaluations, but because neither supported legal insanity and both contained damaging material, counsel reasonably declined to call an expert. The court also noted that, under Carpenter, “‘the insanity defense as established by the Legislature is the sole standard for determining criminal responsibility,’” and while psychological traits can bear on self-defense, the jury’s finding of home invasion rendered any PTSD effect “irrelevant to his claim of self-defense[.]” As to sequestration, counsel should have kept a defense witness from the courtroom until called and thus “performed deficiently,” but there was no reasonable probability of a different result given the instruction allowing jurors to weigh the breach, corroborating physical evidence of a prolonged beating inside the camper, motive tied to defendant’s mother, and defendant’s false exculpatory statements. The challenge to the trial court’s curative instruction was waived because counsel expressly approved it. “Having agreed to the jury instruction, defense counsel waived any error.” As to sentencing, because both offenses are “serious crimes” and defendant had three listed priors, the statute required a 25-year minimum. Legislatively mandated terms are “‘presumptively proportional and presumptively valid,’” and although “‘the mandatory 25-year minimum sentence is long, it . . . reflects a rational legislative judgment’” to incapacitate repeat serious offenders. Defendant’s age, PTSD, and background did not present “unusual” circumstances to rebut that presumption, and counsel was not ineffective at sentencing where mitigation was presented and the statute controlled. Affirmed.