Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to present evidence of defendant’s character; MRE 404(a)(1); MRE 405(a) & (b); Relevance; MRE 401; Matters of trial strategy; Prejudice; Exclusion of evidence of the victim’s character; MRE 403; Self-defense; MRE 404(a)(2); People v Edwards; Admission of autopsy photos; Distinguishing People v Falkner; Sentencing; Scoring of OV 6; MCL 777.36(1)(b) & (2)(a); Proportionality; Effect of a within-guidelines sentence

The court rejected defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claims, and held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding evidence of the victim’s character, or err in admitting two autopsy photos. The court also upheld the 25-point score for OV 6 and rejected defendant’s claim that his within-guidelines sentence was disproportionate. Thus, it affirmed his second-degree murder and felony-firearm convictions, and sentences of 14 to 40 years for murder and a consecutive 2-year term for felony-firearm. He first argued on appeal that defense counsel was ineffective for failing to present evidence of his character. But the court found that the trial court did not err in denying him a new trial or evidentiary hearing based on ineffective assistance. The record showed “that defense counsel argued at trial that defendant acted in self-defense and, accordingly, cross-examined the prosecution’s witnesses and called defense witnesses who testified that the teenagers had guns. Further, before trial, defense counsel sought to introduce evidence about the victim to demonstrate that he was the aggressor in this situation, and defense counsel mentioned that an investigator would possibly testify on defendant’s behalf, indicating that defense counsel was acting intentionally to craft his defense. Decisions about which witnesses to call are a matter of trial strategy.” In this case, “defense counsel decided to present a self-defense claim and not present the named-character witnesses. Defendant” failed to “overcome the strong presumption that this constituted reasonable trial strategy[.]” As to the exclusion of “evidence from the victim’s social media sites displaying violent poses or his purported gang affiliation[,]” the trial court focused, in part, during the pretrial motion hearing on the fact defendant did not know the victim. It also “raised doubts that the victim was, in fact, the aggressor even if he made the statement to shoot defendant when it was another person who would have pulled out a gun. Further, [it] stated that the evidence would cause the jury to focus on the wrong information.” The court concluded that it “was not outside of the range of reasonable and principled decisions for the trial court to find that the evidence was irrelevant and prejudicial.”