Muhammad v. State, 572 S.W.3d 21

Malachi Muhammad was convicted of first-degree murder after a jury trial and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment; he does not challenge sufficiency of the evidence.
At sentencing the court instructed the jury that Muhammad would be eligible for parole after serving 70% of his sentence; the State later conceded that instruction was incorrect given Muhammad's prior aggravated-robbery conviction and statutory parole ineligibility.
Muhammad claimed self-defense, testifying that the victim, Robert Ewans, pulled a gun first; no firearm belonging to Ewans was recovered at the scene.
Muhammad sought to introduce evidence that Ewans held a concealed-carry permit to support his justification/self-defense claim; the trial court excluded the permit as unduly prejudicial.
During closing, the prosecutor argued that Muhammad’s failure to call the mother of his children (whom he had told about the shooting) suggested his testimony was false; defense objected and requested a jury admonition, which the court declined to repeat.
Muhammad appealed, raising three errors: the parole-eligibility jury instruction, exclusion of the concealed-carry permit evidence, and the prosecutor’s closing argument; the appellate court affirmed.

Issue	Muhammad's Argument	State's Argument	Held
Jury instruction on parole eligibility	Instruction was incorrect given prior aggravated-robbery conviction and statutory parole ineligibility; the error warranted relief despite no contemporaneous objection	Jury-instruction error was conceded but Muhammad failed to preserve the issue; third Wicks exception for flagrant error does not apply to jury-instruction errors	Affirmed — no relief: Muhammad did not object at trial and the third Wicks exception is inapplicable post-Douglas to unpreserved jury-instruction errors
Exclusion of victim's concealed-carry permit	Permit was relevant to Muhammad's credibility and justification defense; Rule 104(e) permits evidence bearing on credibility/weight	No evidence a firearm was present or owned by the victim; permit had little probative value and would invite speculation	Affirmed — trial court did not abuse discretion excluding the permit as unduly prejudicial where no gun or other corroboration was found
Prosecutor's closing comments about not calling the mother as witness	Prosecutor impermissibly argued that failure to call the witness implied Muhammad lied and shifted burden; court should have admonished or granted mistrial	Comments were within leeway for closing and targeted the State's duty to rebut justification, not the presumption of innocence	Affirmed — no manifest abuse of discretion in the court's control of argument; burden-shifting claim not preserved for appeal

Douglas v. State, 511 S.W.3d 852 (Ark. 2017) (held third Wicks exception does not apply to unpreserved jury-instruction errors)
Rackley v. State, 267 S.W.3d 578 (Ark. 2007) (explains third Wicks exception standard)
Jones v. State, 524 S.W.3d 1 (Ark. Ct. App. 2017) (narrow application of Wicks exceptions to trial-structure errors)
Woodruff v. State, 856 S.W.2d 299 (Ark. 1993) (trial court has discretion to control closing arguments)
Delatorre v. State, 471 S.W.3d 223 (Ark. Ct. App. 2015) (remarks requiring reversal are rare and must appeal to jurors' passions)
Teater v. State, 201 S.W.3d 442 (Ark. Ct. App. 2005) (discusses preservation and harmless-error review for jury-instruction claims)
Davis v. State, 232 S.W.3d 476 (Ark. 2006) (abuse-of-discretion standard for evidentiary rulings)
Hortenberry v. State, 526 S.W.3d 840 (Ark. 2017) (describes high threshold for finding an abuse of discretion)