Background
Devonta Artez Banks’s convictions arose from a prolonged dispute with Kenyuano Jones, a Detroit high-school principal who had removed Banks from a volunteer JROTC position. In 2016, someone fired several shots toward Jones outside the school. Two years later, Jones received messages and fabricated sexual allegations from a sender posing as an underage girl. Screenshots from a staged FaceTime call were posted online, Jones’s vehicle was vandalized, and shots were fired into his home.
Information obtained from a Snapchat account led investigators to Banks and his residence. A search recovered electronic devices and bullet fragments, and forensic evidence indicated that Banks had arranged the FaceTime call. Ballistics evidence also connected casings from the shootings to casings found in Banks’s backyard. After the cases were consolidated, Banks represented himself at trial with standby counsel. The jury acquitted him of charges arising from the 2018 shooting but convicted him of felonious assault, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, two counts of felony-firearm, extortion, two computer-crime offenses, and unlawfully posting a message with aggravating circumstances.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that Banks validly waived counsel after the trial court advised him of the risks of self-representation and Banks unequivocally stated that he wanted to conduct his own defense. The record did not establish that a fee dispute forced that decision. Although the court’s renewed-waiver inquiries were abbreviated on later trial days and omitted on one day, Banks failed to show plain error affecting the outcome. He also could not claim constitutionally ineffective assistance from standby counsel after electing self-representation.
The court rejected Banks’s challenges to the searches and evidence. Even assuming that the forensic-device warrant lacked sufficient particularity, suppression was unwarranted because officers reasonably relied on the 2018 warrant under the good-faith exception. The Snapchat warrant was supported by probable cause and adequately limited by account, date range, and data categories. The home-search warrant also established a sufficient connection among Banks’s residence, the escalating harassment, and the shooting, and it particularly identified the firearms-related evidence sought.
The court further held that admitting the preliminary-examination testimony of Banks’s unavailable former girlfriend did not violate the rules of evidence or the Confrontation Clause. Banks previously had an opportunity and similar motive to cross-examine her, and he identified no material inconsistency in an earlier police statement that would have changed that examination. His unpreserved argument that she should have testified remotely likewise failed because he neither requested that procedure below nor demonstrated resulting prejudice.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant’s repeated, informed decision to represent himself may remain valid despite abbreviated renewed-waiver inquiries during a continuous trial when the record shows continuing awareness and rejection of the right to counsel.
- A self-represented defendant has no constitutional right to standby counsel and therefore cannot demand constitutionally effective assistance from an attorney serving only in that role.
- Even if a digital-search warrant is insufficiently particular, evidence may remain admissible when officers objectively and reasonably relied on the warrant under the good-faith exception.
- Prior testimony from an unavailable witness satisfies the Confrontation Clause when the defendant previously had an adequate opportunity and similar motive to cross-examine the witness.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates how appellate courts assess self-representation over a multiday trial and distinguishes a defendant’s constitutional right to trial counsel from the limited role of standby counsel. It also shows that departures from renewed-waiver procedures will not necessarily require reversal without a demonstrated effect on the defendant’s substantial rights.
The opinion additionally underscores the practical importance of the good-faith exception in challenges to older digital-search warrants. It confirms that warrants targeting online accounts and residential evidence can satisfy probable-cause and particularity requirements when they connect specified records, time periods, and categories of evidence to the alleged criminal conduct.