Michigan Criminal Lawyers Blog

In May of 2012, Bradford S. Mitchell was convicted of second-degree murder in the January 2011 beating death of Jay Kolhoff. Now, the Michigan Court of Appeals has reversed Mitchell’s conviction, clearing the way for a new trial.

Mitchell, a Saginaw resident, was charged by prosecutors with open murder after it was alleged that he was responsible for the death of Kolhoff, who lived in the same apartment complex in Saginaw’s West Side. According to a video-recorded police interview, Kolhoff owed Mitchell $5. When Mitchell went to Kolhoff’s apartment to collect the money, Kolhoff allegedly brought out a baseball bat, then swung it and struck Mitchell in the face. Mitchell told detectives that he eventually grabbed the baseball bat from the victim, then struck him once in the shoulder and once in the head, although he admitted he may have hit him more times.

Upon finding Kolhoff’s body, his best friend Mark Yelle said that there were stab wounds on the back of Kolhoff’s neck, according to a news article at Mlive.com.

Ultimately, Appeals Court appellate judges found that the jury in Mitchell’s trial should have been given the option to convict the defendant of voluntary manslaughter. In the original trial, Mitchell was convicted of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent; the judges vacated this conviction after interpreting a statute.

Appellate judges found that prosecutors must demonstrate that the defendant killed in the heat of passion, that the passion was caused by adequate provocation, and there was not a lapse of time during which a reasonable person could control his passions in order to prove voluntary manslaughter. They went on to say that provocation is a circumstance that negates the presence of malice rather than an element of voluntary manslaughter.

During Mitchell’s trial, the jury asked Saginaw County Circuit Judge Robert L. Kaczmarek whether first- and second-degree murder were their only conviction options, which the judge confirmed. The appellate judges found that Kaczmarek erred in this case.

As is evidenced in this case, judges in criminal cases do make errors. Michigan criminal appeals attorneys understand that having a conviction reversed is not an easy task to accomplish, and requires the skill and expertise of an attorney experienced in this complex area of criminal defense.

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In September of 2011, 45-year-old Rodney A. Slayton was found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder in the 1992 strangulation death of Lynette Gibson, a mother of five children who was 39 years old at the time of her death. It was 18 years after the murder, which had become a cold case, before Slayton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It took the jury just 40 minutes to reach a verdict.

Slayton never confessed to the crime, although his ex-wife and her uncle testified at trial that he confessed to killing the woman by strangling Gibson with a seat belt as she sat in the passenger seat in his mother’s car.

While he has maintained his innocence in the murder, Slayton appealed his conviction arguing that his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was violated, and that his Sixth Amendment right and two Michigan Department of Corrections prison rules were also violated in connection with a recorded interview with Sandra Slayton, his wife at the time, his ex-wife’s testimony, police questioning, and the evidence in general.

Sandra Slayton had participated as an agent willingly with the Cold Case Homicide Unit of the Saginaw Police Department’s Violent Crime Task Force, which is now defunct. Slayton argued in his appeal that prison rules regarding recorded conversations and eavesdropping were violated; he also challenged the testimony of his wife at the time the murder took place, Rachelle Carpenter. Carpenter testified that Slayton told her that he had killed Gibson, and that she assumed he was telling the truth. Carpenter also mentioned that Slayton had been arrested in the past for domestic violence, although the judge in the case instructed the jury to disregard that statement. It was on this point that Slayton argued his attorney should have motioned for a mistrial.

Ultimately, appellate judges Karen M. Fort Hood, Peter D. O’Connell, and E. Thomas Fitzgerald disagreed with Slayton’s arguments and upheld his conviction.

Michigan post-conviction defense lawyers know that winning an appeal is no easy task, and that without an experienced and knowledgeable attorney who is skilled in this area of the law, the chances of winning are slim.

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40-year-old Tracy Russell was convicted in March of 2012 of aggravated stalking and larceny from a building in connection with allegedly stalking his former girlfriend and stealing her heirloom jewelry as she was recovering from cancer surgery. He was sentenced to two to five years in prison by Jackson County Circuit Judge Susan Beebe in April of last year.

Russell appealed his conviction and sentence to the Michigan Court of Appeals, arguing that the prosecution should not have been allowed by the trial court to present evidence that Russell had stalked a former girlfriend, an act that he was not charged with. Russell also raised other issues with the appeals court which were not described in a news article at Mlive.com.

Russell’s alleged victim, Kimberly VanSyckle, testified in court that Russell sent her at least 50 text messages and called her nearly 1,000 times between early August and early September of 2011. At the time VanSyckle was recovering from breast cancer surgery, and said that she got to the point where she couldn’t take the constant phone calls and texts anymore. VanSyckle testified that she and Russell had lived together the previous year, and that she suspected he had stolen heirloom jewelry she had stored in a dresser, jewelry that her deceased mother had given her.

On June 27 of this year, appellate judges rejected Russell’s contentions and affirmed his conviction and sentencing.

Michigan attorneys who practice in the area of criminal appeals know it is critical that individuals who feel they have been wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced obtain the services of a lawyer with much experience and success in criminal appeals. This is a highly complex process which cannot be handled successfully by an attorney with little or no experience with appellate matters.

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Last month, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined that a jury should decide if two Sturgis police officers, Damon Knapp and Mark Stoneburner, used excessive force against a young man and his mother when entering their home following an alleged shoplifting incident without a warrant.

Charles Smith, 20, was a suspect in an alleged shoplifting incident at a Sturgis Walgreens; he was suspected of stealing a $14.99 phone charger, a misdemeanor theft. In 2010, the Walgreens store reported to police that a phone charger had been stolen. According to a news article at the Detroit News, someone found a package in the store with a portion of the charger cut off. When confronted by the store manager, Charles Smith walked home and did not remain at the store until police arrived.

Later when Knapp and Stoneburner arrived at Smith’s home, Stoneburner allegedly entered without a warrant, pulling the suspect onto a deck where it is alleged by Smith that officers slammed his head against a railing while handcuffing him. A 12-page opinion issued by the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals stated that “Shoplifting of this sort offers no reason by itself for banging a suspect’s head against a wall.” The panel also affirmed a ruling made by a district court judge that the officers involved are not immune to litigation.

Knapp and Stoneburner’s attorney maintained that the suspect was resisting arrest; the federal appeals court found that the decision as to whether the officers or Smith are giving a true account of the incident should be left up to a jury.

The opinion ultimately found that if Smith did not resist arrest, the officers may have used excessive force. Smith’s mother also claimed that she was injured while trying to intervene during the incident at the home.

As all seasoned Michigan criminal appeals attorneys know, police officers are not beyond making errors in judgment. Mistakes can be made at nearly any point in the course of an arrest, or even at trial.

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