State v. McDuffie, 2014 Ohio 4924

At a family repass after a funeral, an altercation occurred; Angela Webb (victim) left with several family members in her car, including defendant Maurice McDuffie, his mother Mattie, and sister Tieisha.
Shortly after leaving, the car stopped and a physical fight between Angela and Mattie ensued; witnesses’ accounts conflicted about who was the aggressor and who inflicted injuries.
Angela testified Maurice grabbed her by the hair, punched and kicked her (including a kick to the face), producing a one-inch chin laceration requiring stitches and resulting in permanent scarring.
Mattie and Tieisha testified Maurice did not strike Angela (Tieisha saw only a kick to the leg after the fight); Mattie said she and Angela exchanged blows and left without visible injury.
Maurice was convicted by a jury of felonious assault and sentenced to eight years in prison. He appealed raising errors in jury instructions (defense of others; failure to instruct on aggravated assault) and ineffective assistance of counsel.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the defense-of-others jury instruction was erroneous/incomplete	State: Instruction was given; no reversible error because record did not support defense of others as a defense	McDuffie: Instruction was incomplete, misleading, misstated law and commingled self-defense elements	Court: Instruction was flawed but not plain error because defense-of-others instruction was unsupported by the evidence and thus would not have changed the outcome
Whether the trial court erred by not instructing on lesser included offense of aggravated assault	State: No aggravated-assault instruction required because evidence did not support serious provocation or lesser-offense verdict	McDuffie: Trial court should have instructed on aggravated assault as a lesser-included offense	Court: No error — record did not supply sufficient evidence of serious provocation to warrant aggravated-assault instruction
Whether counsel was ineffective for not requesting aggravated-assault instruction / not objecting to defense-of-others instruction	State: Even if counsel erred, no prejudice because instructions lacked evidentiary support; outcome would not have changed	McDuffie: Counsel deficient for failing to secure proper lesser-included instruction and for not objecting to faulty defense-of-others instruction	Court: Strickland prejudice prong not met — no reasonable probability result would differ because evidence did not support either instruction

State v. Triplett, 949 N.E.2d 1058 (Ohio App. 2011) (improper commingling of self-defense and defense-of-others instructions can be plain error)
State v. Deem, 533 N.E.2d 294 (Ohio 1988) (aggravated assault instruction required when evidence supports serious provocation)
State v. Conway, 842 N.E.2d 996 (Ohio 2006) (lesser-included-offense instruction required only when evidence could reasonably support conviction on the lesser offense)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (U.S. 1984) (two-prong test for ineffective assistance of counsel)