Background
Paw Paw police officers responded to a neighborhood dispute involving Steven Michael Brooks and his sister, Rebecca Brooks. After Brooks became verbally aggressive, an officer saw him shove Rebecca with both hands on her shoulders. Brooks and Rebecca testified instead that he tried to hug her and that she pushed him away.
As officers approached, Brooks entered his vehicle and accelerated backward out of the driveway. An officer yelled for him to stop, and the officers later followed with the patrol car’s emergency lights and siren activated. Brooks continued driving away. After a bench trial, the Van Buren Circuit Court convicted him of third-degree fleeing and eluding and domestic violence. He appealed, arguing that the evidence was insufficient on both counts.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals held that sufficient evidence supported the fleeing-and-eluding conviction. The dashcam video and testimony permitted the trial court to find that Brooks was driving when he received commands to stop, knew about those commands, and intentionally took affirmative steps to evade the officers by accelerating backward down the street, turning around, and continuing away despite the patrol car’s lights and siren.
The court also held that sufficient evidence supported the domestic-violence conviction. The trial court was entitled to credit the officer’s testimony that Brooks shoved Rebecca, which established an offensive touching. Alternatively, even under Brooks’s account that he tried to hug her, her forceful rejection permitted a rational factfinder to conclude that she apprehended an immediate offensive touching. The court therefore affirmed both convictions.
Key Takeaways
- A fleeing-and-eluding conviction requires affirmative conduct intended to flee or avoid capture, not merely a failure to submit.
- Commands conveyed through emergency lights or a siren can independently support the statutory requirement that police direct a driver to stop.
- On sufficiency review, appellate courts defer to the factfinder’s credibility choices and draw reasonable inferences in favor of the verdict.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the substantial evidentiary weight that dashcam footage, police testimony, and circumstantial evidence can carry in a fleeing-and-eluding prosecution, including on the disputed questions of awareness and intent.
It also confirms that Michigan’s domestic-violence statute may be satisfied by either an offensive touching or conduct causing reasonable apprehension of an immediate battery, even when witnesses offer conflicting accounts of the encounter.