Witness bribery; MCL 750.122; Withholding testimony; Other acts evidence; Domestic violence; MCL 768.27b; Web search history; MRE 403; State of mind; People v Wisniewski; Credibility; People v Meissner; Sentencing; OV 9; MCL 777.39; Resentencing; People v Carter

The court held that sufficient evidence supported defendant’s witness-bribery conviction, that the challenged web-search, phone-call, and domestic-violence evidence was admissible, but that resentencing was required on the CSC I conviction because OV 9 was improperly scored. Defendant was convicted of CSC I, several CSC II offenses, domestic violence, and witness bribery arising from sexual and physical abuse involving his stepdaughters and his later effort to influence his biological daughter’s testimony. On appeal, the court first held that the witness-bribery conviction was supported because MCL 750.122(1)(c) prohibits encouraging a witness “to withhold testimony, or to testify falsely,” and the word “or” showed that the statute separately reaches attempts to induce a witness to omit information. The jury could reasonably infer defendant attempted to buy his daughter’s silence because, after an emotional phone call in which he urged her not to disclose abuse, he began making promises that were “substantially more generous than promises he had made in the past.” The court next held that defendant’s phone search for stepdaughter pornography was admissible because, under Wisniewski, searches using terms descriptive of victims are “highly relevant” to state of mind and motive, and the trial court reduced unfair prejudice by excluding other searches. The court also held that defendant’s crude phone-call joke was admissible because it was relevant to credibility, particularly his claim that an earlier inappropriate incident was accidental or out of character and that he had “grown as a person.” As to the domestic-violence other acts, the court held that the evidence was admissible under MCL 768.27b because it bore on credibility and made it more probable that defendant’s second wife and the children were telling the truth, especially where defendant portrayed his second wife as “a serial manipulator.” Finally, the court held that OV 9 was improperly scored because the CSC I victim described incidents in which defendant “isolated her from everyone else first,” meaning only one victim was placed in danger during the sentencing offense. Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.