Background
Parker Isaac Adams and his girlfriend, Emily Gordon, met Gavin Carney at a park after Gordon told Adams that Carney had previously raped her. Adams testified that Carney approached with a knife, prompting Adams to stab him twice in the shoulder. According to Adams, Carney retreated to his vehicle, Gordon pursued him, and Adams later pulled Carney from the vehicle while Gordon repeatedly stabbed him. Carney sustained more than 100 stab wounds.
Adams and Gordon hid Carney’s body, moved his vehicle, and fled to Florida. Adams kept the vehicle’s key fob and used a credit card belonging to Carney’s mother. A jury acquitted Adams of armed robbery but convicted him of second-degree murder and unlawfully driving away a motor vehicle. He received concurrent sentences of 37 to 60 years for murder and, after resentencing, 702 days for the vehicle offense.
On appeal, Adams challenged the jury instructions, admission of a written “to-do” list referring to murder and burying bodies, a purported no-contact condition, the sentencing court’s alleged consideration of acquitted conduct, the offense-variable scoring, the sufficiency of the evidence, and the proportionality of his sentence. He also raised evidentiary, constitutional, prosecutorial-misconduct, and ineffective-assistance claims.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that raising an instructional error for the first time in a posttrial motion does not preserve the issue because the trial court no longer has an opportunity to avoid the error during trial. Reviewing for plain error, the court concluded that the requested duty-to-retreat and rebuttable-presumption instructions were unsupported by the evidence. Carney had dropped his knife and retreated before Adams and Gordon pursued him, and Carney had not broken into a dwelling or business or attempted to remove anyone forcibly from a vehicle. Counsel therefore was not ineffective for failing to request those instructions.
The court also held that Adams’s “to-do” list was admissible. Its contents were Adams’s own statements of intent, not other-acts evidence barred by MRE 404(b), and they were relevant to motive without being unfairly prejudicial. The purported no-contact condition was moot because it appeared only in the court’s oral remarks and not in the written judgment of sentence.
The sentencing court did not improperly rely on Adams’s acquittal of armed robbery when it said that he had “robbed” Carney. In context, the remark referred to Adams’s undisputed taking of Carney’s vehicle and credit card, not to a finding that he committed armed robbery. The appellate court additionally upheld the offense-variable scores, rejected Adams’s remaining evidentiary and constitutional claims, found sufficient evidence to support the murder conviction, and ruled that his within-guidelines murder sentence was proportionate.
Key Takeaways
- An instructional challenge is not preserved merely by raising it for the first time in a motion for a new trial; the objection or request must be made while the trial court can still correct the instructions.
- A defendant’s written statements of intent may be admitted as party admissions rather than other-acts evidence when they are relevant to motive and survive unfair-prejudice review.
- A sentencing court may consider undisputed conduct consistent with an acquittal, but due process prohibits relying on conduct the jury necessarily rejected.
Why It Matters
The unpublished decision provides a detailed application of Michigan law governing preservation of jury-instruction claims, self-defense instructions, party admissions, and acquitted conduct at sentencing. Its preservation holding makes clear that a posttrial motion cannot substitute for a timely instructional objection or request.
The opinion also illustrates the importance of the written judgment of sentence: an orally announced restriction that is omitted from the judgment is not an enforceable sentencing condition. For sentencing challenges under Michigan’s acquitted-conduct doctrine, the decision emphasizes examining precisely what conduct the jury rejected and whether the sentencing court’s remarks instead concerned undisputed facts consistent with the verdict.