Background
In May 2021, William Badger Jr. drove his neighbor’s 2003 Lexus convertible on a liquor run with the neighbor’s husband, David Campbell, as his passenger. Witnesses and Badger’s own admissions established that he had consumed whiskey before driving, was traveling between 63 and 90 miles per hour in a posted 55 mph zone, and ran through a clearly marked stop sign at the intersection of Lipp Highway and Ottawa Lake Road without braking. The car flipped into a drainage ditch; Campbell broke his neck and died at the scene. A hospital blood draw later revealed Badger’s BAC was 0.18—more than twice Michigan’s legal limit of 0.08.
Badger was charged with operating while intoxicated causing death under MCL 257.625 and reckless driving causing death under MCL 257.626. He rejected a plea offer to plead guilty to one count in exchange for one year in jail, and the case proceeded to a four-day jury trial. The jury convicted on both counts, and the Lenawee Circuit Court sentenced Badger to concurrent terms of 54 months to 15 years on each conviction.
On appeal, Badger’s appellate counsel argued: (1) insufficient evidence supported the “willful or wanton disregard” element of reckless driving; (2) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the prosecutor’s references to Badger’s refusal to submit to a law-enforcement blood draw; and (3) the within-guidelines sentences were unreasonable. In a supplemental pro se brief, Badger additionally claimed trial counsel was ineffective for advising him to reject the plea offer and that his charges were constitutionally defective for lack of a grand jury indictment.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed all convictions. On the reckless driving count, the court held that the evidence was more than sufficient to support the “willful or wanton disregard” element. Speeding alone might not suffice, but the totality of the evidence—driving at 63 to 90 mph in a 55 mph zone, blowing through a plainly visible stop sign without any attempt to brake, having a BAC of 0.18, and having expressed an intent to “open up” the car before driving—permitted a rational jury to find that Badger knowingly disregarded a known risk of death or injury. The court rejected Badger’s argument that the medical examiner’s “accidental” classification of the death precluded a reckless-driving finding, noting that the classification does not foreclose a legal determination of willful disregard.
On the blood-draw-refusal issue, the court held there was no prosecutorial error and therefore no basis for an ineffective-assistance claim. Under MCL 257.625a(9), evidence of a defendant’s refusal to submit to a chemical test is admissible only to show that a test was offered—not as substantive evidence of guilt. The court found the prosecutor complied with that limitation and that the trial court gave a correct limiting instruction. Critically, defense counsel itself had raised the refusal in closing argument to attack the integrity of the police investigation; the prosecutor’s rebuttal references were a direct response to that strategy, not an independent attempt to use the refusal as guilt evidence.
The court further held that defense counsel’s decision not to object was objectively reasonable trial strategy: counsel deliberately used the blood-draw refusal and Deputy Warner’s response to it as a centerpiece of the “botched investigation” defense theory. Because the prosecutor committed no misconduct and counsel had strategic reasons for non-objection, neither the prosecutorial-error nor the ineffective-assistance claims satisfied the applicable standards under Strickland v. Washington and Michigan’s plain-error rule.
Key Takeaways
- A reckless-driving-causing-death conviction can rest on a combination of speeding, failure to stop at a posted sign, and intoxication—no single factor is required, and an “accidental” manner-of-death finding by a medical examiner does not preclude the jury from finding willful or wanton disregard.
- Under MCL 257.625a(9), a defendant’s refusal to submit to a chemical test is admissible only to prove a test was offered; a proper limiting instruction cures any risk that jurors treat the refusal as substantive proof of guilt, and a prosecutor who highlights the refusal in rebuttal solely to answer defense attacks on the investigation does not commit misconduct.
- Where defense counsel strategically leverages a defendant’s blood-draw refusal to challenge the adequacy of the police investigation, failing to object to the prosecutor’s responsive references to that same refusal is presumptively reasonable trial strategy, not deficient performance.
- A lay witness—including a police officer—may testify to an estimate of a vehicle’s speed based on personal observation; an officer relying on accident-reconstruction training and data should be qualified as an expert first, but failure to do so is harmless when multiple independent sources corroborate the speed estimate.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that Michigan prosecutors may combine speeding, stop-sign violations, and intoxication evidence to meet the “willful or wanton disregard” threshold for reckless driving—a higher bar than negligence—without requiring any single factor to be decisive. Defense attorneys handling OWI or reckless-driving cases should be aware that attacking the reliability of a hospital blood draw and the competence of the police investigation can open the door to prosecutor rebuttal on the very evidence they sought to exclude.
The case also serves as a reminder of the double-edged risk in blood-draw-refusal situations: while MCL 257.625a(9) limits the permitted use of refusal evidence, hospital blood draws obtained for medical purposes remain independently admissible under MCL 257.625a(6)(e) regardless of whether the defendant refused a law-enforcement draw—and subpoena authority extends to out-of-state medical records, as occurred here when Michigan deputies obtained Ohio hospital results.