Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to request a jury instruction for the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter; People v Yeager

On remand from the Michigan Supreme Court for reconsideration in light of Yeager, the court held that because “trial counsel’s decision not to request a voluntary manslaughter instruction was objectively reasonable in this case, defendant cannot establish the first prong of his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim and his claim fails.” He was convicted of second-degree murder, FIP, and felony-firearm (second offense). The court noted that his “trial testimony was that the victim accidentally shot himself during the tussle between defendant and the victim.” Defendant argued “that the evidence established that he acted out of passion because the shooting occurred after he had been hit in the head with a bottle and fell to the ground in the midst of a fight with the victim.” Although the facts were “not as compelling as in Yeager, a physical altercation in which a person is hit in the head with a glass bottle could cause a reasonable person to lose control. While there was no express testimony that defendant was scared, and one witness testified that defendant did not look scared, defendant testified that he reacted in order to try to ‘retain life.’” Further, although “the insult made by the victim was alone insufficient to constitute adequate provocation, the entire series of events that led up to the shooting presents a closer question whether a jury could reasonably conclude that the physical altercation stoked defendant’s passions such that he acted out of heightened emotion rather than reason in shooting the victim.” The court held that nonetheless, unlike in Yeager, “trial counsel’s failure to request the voluntary manslaughter instruction was not clearly based on a misunderstanding of the law.” The court held that “even if a rational view of the evidence would have supported the voluntary manslaughter instruction, requesting such instruction would have undermined defendant’s testimony. Trial counsel’s decision to forgo the voluntary manslaughter instruction and avoid weakening defendant’s testimony was reasonable trial strategy.” Affirmed.