Evidence of other acts of domestic violence; MCL 768.27b(1); MRE 403; People v Watkins; Sufficiency of the evidence for a domestic violence conviction; MCL 750.81(2); People v Cameron; Assault & battery; Ministerial correction of the judgment of sentence (JOS) & the presentence investigation report (PSIR)

The court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting other acts evidence and that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant’s domestic violence conviction. The other acts evidence concerned “five other acts of domestic violence.” The court found that his “argument that recantation by the victim and her son undermined the reliability of the” other acts evidence revealed “the primary purpose that the trial court envisioned for that evidence. [It] observed that the evidence of defendant’s prior acts of domestic violence would shed light on ‘the relationship between the defendant and a victim,’ and it would ‘help the jury explain why a witness may recant.’” The court agreed “that such evidence, even if prejudicial, served an important purpose in assisting the jury in its assessment of the credibility problem arising from the recantations of the victim and her son at trial.” As to his assertion that “the conduct underlying two of the prior acts was factually dissimilar” the court noted that he did not “contest (or even acknowledge) the prosecutor’s contention that the ‘majority’ of the five prior acts involved some form of hair pulling. Because each instance of domestic violence involved the same victim and usually included similar violent actions,” the court did not believe that his “prior acts of domestic violence were insufficiently like the allegations in” this case to justify exclusion of the evidence under MRE 403. And “the trial court properly instructed the jury about the proper use of the” other acts evidence. Defendant also contended “that any evidence of hair pulling indicated a mere ‘tug’ insufficient to establish domestic violence.” The court determined that this contention was misplaced “because a conviction of domestic violence does not require proof of a threshold degree of physical injury. . . . Whether [he] pulled the victim’s hair, and, if so, whether the ‘tug’ rose to the level of a harmful or offensive touching were questions of fact pertinent to establishing the elements of the charged offense. Although the jurors were presented with conflicting evidence on those points, . . . there was sufficient evidence of aggressive hair pulling to support [its] resolution of that conflict by finding defendant guilty.” The court affirmed his conviction and sentence but remanded for the ministerial correction of the JOS and the PSIR.