Sufficiency of the evidence of identity as the perpetrator; Prosecutorial misconduct; Alleged misstatement of the evidence; Curative instruction

Holding that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant’s identity as the shooter, and that the prosecutor’s challenged closing argument remarks were supported by the evidence, the court affirmed his convictions. He was convicted of second-degree murder, AWIM, and felony-firearm. The court concluded that “there was ample evidence” allowing a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the shooter. Both survivors, L and B, identified him as such. They were both in L’s “car as the shooter leaned his upper body out of the Jeep, said, ‘Hey, my n****r,’ and fired. A rational jury could have believed their testimony and concluded that defendant was the shooter.” He asserted that their “identification testimony was flawed because [they] could have seen the shooter only briefly and initially did not identify him to the police. But these complaints largely amount to a question of whether” their testimony was credible, which was solely for the jury. The two men only had “a couple seconds to see the shooter. But both insisted at trial that they knew defendant was the shooter. [L] said that he was ‘good with faces.’ And the shooter likely caught their attention by speaking and leaning out of the Jeep. Although neither” one of them knew him “well and both agreed that defendant did not have especially distinguishing features, both had seen [him] before in person and on social media. So the jury was free to believe [their] testimony that they were able to identify defendant as the shooter during this brief window of time.” As to the failure to identify him to the police that night, the jury was free to believe their “testimony that they initially lied because they did not want to get involved but that they knew all along that defendant was the shooter. There was also significant additional evidence presented that corroborated [their] identification testimony and circumstantially linked defendant to the crime[,]” including evidence linking him to the shooter’s Jeep.