Background
Jason David Sadowski was prosecuted for killing his roommate, who suffered severe facial and neck injuries and died from asphyxia caused by bleeding. The victim was in poor health and often needed a cane or crutch. Sadowski, whose hand was swollen when police found him at a hotel, claimed that the victim attacked him and that he acted in self-defense.
The jury found Sadowski guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. The trial court, which had reserved its ruling on Sadowski’s directed-verdict motion, later concluded that the evidence did not support premeditation and reduced the conviction to second-degree murder. It sentenced Sadowski to 50 to 75 years in prison after scoring Offense Variable 6 at 50 points and OVs 12 and 13 at 25 points each.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. It said the trial court likely erred by admitting a video showing Sadowski punching and choking another jail inmate because Michigan Rule of Evidence 405 generally did not permit that specific act to prove a character trait that was not an essential element of the charge or self-defense claim. But Sadowski had not preserved that objection, and any error did not warrant reversal under plain-error review. Other evidence—including the victim’s extensive injuries, Sadowski’s minimal injuries, his statements and conduct after the killing, his martial-arts experience, and testimony that words could provoke him physically—strongly undermined his self-defense claim.
The court also rejected Sadowski’s challenges involving substitution of counsel, self-representation, excluded evidence, ineffective assistance, the directed-verdict procedure, COVID-19 precautions, and cumulative error. It nevertheless vacated the sentence because the trial court improperly used the same conduct to score both OV 12 and OV 13 at 25 points. The prosecution also conceded that OV 6 should not have been scored at 50 points. Because correcting OV 13 to zero and scoring OV 6 at either 10 or 25 points would change the guidelines range, resentencing was required; the trial court must determine the proper OV 6 score in the first instance.
Key Takeaways
- Specific-act evidence offered to rebut a defendant’s asserted nonaggressive character remains subject to the methods of proof permitted by MRE 405.
- The likely erroneous admission of the jailhouse-assault video did not satisfy plain-error review because the remaining evidence strongly contradicted Sadowski’s self-defense theory.
- The same conduct could not support 25-point scores under both OV 12 and OV 13, and the erroneous guidelines calculation required resentencing.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates that evidence becoming relevant under MRE 404(a) does not eliminate MRE 405’s restrictions on how character may be proved. It also shows the difficulty of obtaining reversal for an unpreserved evidentiary error when substantial physical and testimonial evidence independently supports the verdict.
For sentencing practitioners, the opinion emphasizes the statutory prohibition against counting the same qualifying conduct under both OV 12 and OV 13. A scoring error requires resentencing when its correction changes the applicable guidelines range, even when the conviction itself remains intact.