Background
After a contentious divorce, Barika Butler-Quarles learned that her ex-husband, Jonathan Quarles, had begun a relationship with Naomi Long. On August 4, 2021, Butler-Quarles fabricated a medical emergency involving one of their children to lure Jonathan away from his Detroit townhouse, then entered the home without his permission. Security footage showed her knocking on the front door at 6:47 p.m.; she ultimately gained entry and concealed herself in the master bathroom. She had purchased the handgun found at the scene the day before. Cellular data placed her phone pinging towers covering Jonathan’s address from 6:41 p.m. onward.
When Long entered the bathroom, she saw Butler-Quarles crouching beside the toilet in a large mirror. Butler-Quarles stood, pointed the gun at Long, and fired. The single bullet grazed Long’s wrist, passed through her bicep, and exited her back. Butler-Quarles then pursued Long into a walk-in closet with the gun raised, twice saying “[Y]ou’re f**king with the wrong bitch.” A struggle ensued until Jonathan intervened, disarmed Butler-Quarles, and held her until police arrived. Upon arrest, Butler-Quarles falsely identified herself to officers and claimed Jonathan had a protection order against her.
At trial, the jury convicted Butler-Quarles of assault with intent to cause great bodily harm (AWIGBH) — the lesser-included offense of the charged assault with intent to murder — intentionally discharging a firearm in a building, first-degree home invasion, and three corresponding counts of felony-firearm. She was sentenced to terms of 29 months to 10 years, 36 months to 15 years, and 57 months to 20 years on the principal counts, all running concurrently with mandatory two-year felony-firearm terms. She appealed, raising ineffective assistance of counsel, erroneous denial of an accident jury instruction, improper handling of a jury transcript request, and prosecutorial misconduct.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed on all grounds. On ineffective assistance, the court evaluated four sub-claims and found none satisfied the two-prong Strickland standard. Counsel’s decision not to retain a forensic mental health expert was held non-prejudicial because evidence of Butler-Quarles’s depression and suicidal ideation was already before the jury, yet provided no defense to why she unlawfully entered the home and shot Long without provocation. The court noted that while the trial court’s blanket statement that psychological evidence is inadmissible absent an insanity defense swept too broadly under Michigan law, the error was harmless because Butler-Quarles identified no valid purpose the evidence would have served beyond explaining the gun purchase — a fact that did not address the charged conduct. Counsel’s decision not to call either of Butler-Quarles’s friends was upheld as reasonable trial strategy: one friend’s text messages would have shown she urged Butler-Quarles to leave Jonathan’s house during the incident, and the other’s testimony about Butler-Quarles being unaware Long had been shot was undermined by blood found on Butler-Quarles’s dress. Counsel’s advice that Butler-Quarles not testify was likewise reasonable, given her multiple false statements to police that would have been replayed repeatedly on cross-examination, risking an upgrade to the more serious AWIM conviction.
The court rejected the claim that the trial court abused its discretion in denying an accident instruction. Long’s testimony that Butler-Quarles rose from a concealed crouch, leveled the gun, fired, then pursued Long with the weapon raised was corroborated by physical evidence. No evidence in the record supported a theory of accidental discharge. On the jury-transcript issue, the court found that even assuming the trial court’s response effectively foreclosed renewal of the request — contrary to MCR 2.513(P) — Butler-Quarles forfeited the claim by failing to object and could not show prejudice, because Long’s highly damaging testimony was less accessible to the jury without a transcript, not more.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant’s depression or suicidal state is not a defense to assault, home invasion, or firearms charges; such evidence may be admissible for limited purposes under Michigan law, but its exclusion is harmless where it would not alter the outcome given the evidence of intentional conduct.
- Counsel’s advice to forgo testifying is constitutionally sound when the defendant has a documented history of false statements that the prosecutor could exploit on cross-examination — particularly where testifying is the only route to an accident instruction that the facts would not otherwise support.
- Under MCR 2.513(P), a trial court may not permanently foreclose a jury’s ability to obtain a requested transcript, but failure to object at trial limits appellate review to plain-error, and the defendant must show the error affected the outcome — an especially difficult burden when the requested testimony was uniformly harmful to the defense.
- Decisions not to call witnesses are treated as trial strategy not subject to appellate second-guessing, and ineffectiveness is not established without a showing that the untested testimony would have created a reasonable probability of a different verdict.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces Michigan’s demanding standard for ineffective-assistance claims arising out of post-conviction evidentiary hearings: defendants must show not merely that counsel could have done something differently, but that the alternative approach would have meaningfully altered the outcome against a backdrop of overwhelming evidence. The opinion’s treatment of the psychological-evidence issue also clarifies that, while Michigan’s ban on diminished-capacity defenses does not categorically bar all mental-health testimony, courts and defense counsel should identify a precise, admissible purpose for such evidence — vague assertions that it supports an “accident” theory will not suffice.
For practitioners, the case illustrates the high deference courts extend to counsel’s calculation that putting a defendant on the stand — when the defendant has made multiple provably false statements — may help the prosecution more than the defense. The court’s endorsement of that strategy, even though it foreclosed an accident instruction, signals that tactical concessions made to avoid credibility damage at trial are unlikely to be second-guessed on appeal in Michigan.