Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to object to the admission of Facebook messages & other testimony; Relevance; MRE 401; Unfair prejudice; MRE 403; Authentication; MRE 901; The best-evidence rule; MRE 1002; “Original” writing; MRE 1001(3); Prosecutorial misconduct; Misstating the law of self-defense; Sentencing; Proportionality; Effect of a within-guidelines sentence

The court concluded that defendant-Brown’s “lawyer did not render constitutionally deficient assistance by failing to object on the basis that the” Facebook messages and other testimony were irrelevant or inadmissible under MRE 403. Also, the prosecutor did not misstate the law of self-defense. Finally, Brown did not show that his within-guidelines sentence was disproportionate or that the trial court erred by failing to consider his age as a mitigating factor. He was convicted of AWIM, intentional discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, FIP, and felony-firearm, second offense. He was sentenced as a fourth-offense habitual offender to 840 months to 125 years for AWIM; 152 months to 70 years for discharge of a firearm from a vehicle; 76 months to 70 years for FIP; and 5 years for each count of felony-firearm, to be served consecutively to, and preceding, the other felony sentences. Brown argued that his lawyer’s assistance was ineffective because he did not object to the admission of Facebook messages. Taken as a whole, the messages were “relevant to a fact of consequence: Brown’s motive for instigating a shootout. They allow for an inference that Brown and [victim-H] were ‘beefing,’ that [H] wanted to ‘get along’ but Brown did not want to, and that Brown was making threats toward [H]. Those threats included what appears to be a deadline for [H] and [H’s] brother to leave the neighborhood, an indication that Brown wanted [H] to ‘line up’ rather than hide, and a reference to [H] never meeting his ‘seed,’ which is presumably a reference to [H’s] children.” Because each inference went toward Brown’s motive, the messages were relevant. He also argued that his lawyer should have objected under MRE 403, as the messages were unfairly prejudicial because they were sent over a year before the shootout. “Because the probative value of the evidence was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, Brown’s lawyer was not ineffective for failing to object to its admission under MRE 403.” As to his claim the messages were inadmissible because they were not properly “authenticated,” he did not argue that there was a lack of authentication under MRE 901. Rather, he relied on the best evidence rule to claim that there was nothing to show the contents of the writing were accurately reflected. But he did not show that an objection on the basis the “messages were not the best evidence would have been successful.” Thus, he could not “meet his burden of showing that his lawyer’s failure to object constituted deficient performance." Affirmed.