Sufficiency of the evidence for a maintaining a drug house conviction; MCL 333.7405(1)(d); “Keep or maintain”; People v Thompson; Fourth Amendment; Consent; Reasonable suspicion for a brief detention; Whether the pre-detention investigation constituted a search & seizure; Const 1963, art 1, § 11; Ineffective assistance of counsel; Objection to expert testimony; Lack of a rebuttal expert or motion to suppress; Allocution; People v Dixon-Bey

The court held that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant’s maintaining a drug house conviction. It also rejected his Fourth Amendment challenges to the search of a safe, his brief detention while officers investigated, and the pre-detention investigation. Further, it found that he was not denied the effective assistance of counsel or a meaningful opportunity to allocute. Thus, it affirmed his convictions (he was also convicted of meth delivery) and sentences, as a fourth-offense habitual offender, to 8 to 50 years for the delivery conviction and 6 to 15 years for the maintaining a drug house conviction. While conducting surveillance at a hotel, an officer “saw defendant repeatedly walk between the hotel and a car occupied by” another individual (D). Officers later “recovered approximately one gram of meth[] from the driver’s side of the car, pipes from inside the car, and a safe from the trunk. The safe contained approximately 7.3 grams of meth[], a scale, and packaging material.” The court noted that to “establish that defendant maintained a drug house on the basis of [D’s] car, the prosecution had to prove that defendant knowingly kept or maintained the car and made it available for the purpose of using, keeping, or selling” meth. The court concluded that “the evidence permitted the jury to find the required degree of continuity. [D] owned the car, but she testified that defendant regularly drove it and that both of them kept belongings in it. [D] also testified that defendant had access to the safe, brought it into the hotel room, and supplied meth[] from it.” The safe was found in the car trunk. Defendant “testified that he intended to drive [D] to Washington, supporting a reasonable inference that the car was not merely an incidental or momentary storage location, but was being used to transport” him, D, their things, and the safe containing meth. Thus, a rational juror could find he “knowingly kept or maintained the car for keeping” meth. The court also found that there was record evidence “supporting the remaining statutory theories.” Further, it concluded that trial counsel was not ineffective for failing “to properly challenge the prosecution’s expert testimony,” not calling a rebuttal expert, or not making a meritless motion to suppress evidence obtained in the vehicle search.