Sufficiency of the evidence for an uttering & publishing conviction; MCL 750.249(1); People v Hawkins; Credibility

Holding that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant’s uttering and publishing conviction, the court affirmed. The case “arose from his tendering a fraudulent rent check.” He argued there was insufficient evidence to establish his knowledge that the instrument was false and his intent to defraud his landlord (E). As to the former, the “prosecution presented sufficient evidence that the check was not associated with a bank account by demonstrating that the drawee bank rejected [it] for failure to locate an account associated with it.” In addition, defendant’s son stated he had never seen him “write or pay with a check, insisting defendant ‘doesn’t write checks.’” Defendant emphasized “that: (1) he ran a business with the name appearing on the check; and (2) the bank employee acknowledged the bank’s system only retrieved information for accounts created within the previous 10 years, such that she could not say defendant’s business never had an account there. But” the court noted that would require it to set aside the reasonable inferences it “must draw from the jury’s verdict. For example, even assuming defendant opened an account at the bank in his business’s name more than 10 years earlier, a jury could still reasonably infer that such account was inactive (and thus unable to be drawn against) when he wrote the check.” As to intent, E’s testimony placed “defendant’s provision of the false check within a larger pattern of avoiding rent payments.” She testified that he “only ever paid a portion of his first month’s rent; responded to her months-long attempts to collect his outstanding (and ever-increasing) rent obligations with unfulfilled promises to pay; and offered excuses or claimed ignorance as to why each alleged payment attempt and method—including the check—failed.” While he offered “innocent conclusions he believes a jury could reach from” the evidence, the prosecution did “not have to disprove ‘every reasonable theory’ of” his innocence.