People of Michigan v. James Mark Washington, 334512

Background

Defendant James Washington was tried for sexually assaulting his then‑11‑year‑old daughter (multiple counts including first‑degree CSC, assault with intent to commit CSC, aggravated indecent exposure, and distributing sexually explicit material to a minor) and was convicted by a jury.
The victim (BW) testified that during an overnight visit defendant performed cunnilingus, showed her pornography on his phone, attempted vaginal and anal penetration, and ejaculated on the bed; she later told her grandfather what happened and her mother reported it to police.
The mother (Calhoun) had received a text from defendant offering $150/month if she did not report the incident; the phone later was destroyed and the text could not be produced at trial.
The trial court admitted Calhoun’s testimony recounting the text’s content and the grandfather’s testimony about BW’s out‑of‑court statements (admitted under the excited utterance exception).
On appeal defendant challenged (1) admission of the text content and the victim’s statements to her grandfather, and (2) trial counsel’s effectiveness for not raising jurisdictional and statutory‑validity objections. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of mother’s testimony recounting text message	Testimony about the text is admissible because the original phone was lost and the contents may be proved under the lost‑original exception	Testimony should be excluded because the text could not be authenticated as required by MRE 901(a)	Admission was permissible under MRE 1004(1) (original lost); authentication rule was irrelevant because the writing itself was not offered; no reversible error
Admissibility of victim’s statements to grandfather	Statements were admissible as excited utterances (MRE 803(2)) given short time between event and disclosure and child’s apparent distress	Statements were unreliable and resulted from questioning, so they are inadmissible hearsay	Court acted within discretion to admit under excited‑utterance exception; even if erroneous, any error was harmless because victim testified similarly at trial
Ineffective assistance: failure to challenge subject‑matter and personal jurisdiction	Court and prosecution assert jurisdiction was proper; counsel had no viable basis to object	Counsel should have challenged court’s jurisdiction	No basis shown for relief; subject‑matter and in‑person jurisdiction properly vested and no obvious error on record
Ineffective assistance: failure to challenge constitutionality of statutes	Statutes are presumed constitutional and the Legislature may criminalize conduct without separate federal implementing regulation	Statutes invalid because they lack an implementing regulation	Defendant failed to develop factual or legal support; statutes are presumed constitutional; no deficient performance shown

Key Cases Cited

People v. Douglas, 496 Mich 557 (preservation of evidentiary objections)
People v. Mann, 288 Mich App 114 (standard of review for evidentiary rulings)
People v. McDaniel, 469 Mich 409 (de novo review on hearsay legal questions)
People v. Goold, 241 Mich App 333 (court may affirm where correct result reached for wrong reason)
People v. Smith, 456 Mich 543 (definition and analysis of excited utterance exception)
People v. Straight, 430 Mich 418 (child statements and limits on excited utterance when elicited by questioning)
United States v. Cronic, 466 US 648 (right to effective assistance of counsel)
People v. Toma, 462 Mich 281 (ineffective assistance standard)
People v. Hoag, 460 Mich 1 (defendant’s burden to establish factual predicate for ineffective‑assistance claim)
People v. Goecke, 457 Mich 442 (subject‑matter and personal jurisdiction principles)