PEOPLE OF MI V DEREK HUSTON
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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN,
UNPUBLISHED
February 20, 2001
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v
No. 217595
Wayne Circuit Court
LC No. 98-007126
DEREK HUSTON,
Defendant-Appellant.
Before: Doctoroff, P.J., and Cavanagh and Meter, JJ.
METER, J. (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I respectfully dissent from the portion of the majority opinion that reverses the
defendant’s conviction and sentence based on drug profile evidence, but I concur in the
majority’s analysis of the remainder of the issues. I would affirm the defendant’s conviction and
sentence.
Even assuming, arguendo, that the drug profile testimony at issue was improperly
admitted, I do not believe that its admission warrants reversal. As stated in People v Murray,
234 Mich App 46, 64; 593 NW2d 690 (1999), the proper standard for assessing the impact of
improperly-admitted testimony is whether it is “highly probable” that the testimony did not affect
the jury’s verdict. I simply cannot discern how the challenged testimony here could have
affected the jury’s verdict. Indeed, the properly-admitted evidence showed that police officers
watched defendant approach a car and obtain money from the occupant, walk over to codefendant Duncan, obtain a small item from Duncan, and return to the car and hand the item to
the driver. This transaction followed a hand-to-hand delivery between Duncan and a pedestrian.
When arrested, Duncan had forty-seven small packages of cocaine on his person. This evidence
overwhelmingly supported the inference that defendant and Duncan were selling cocaine. In
light of the properly-admitted, overwhelming support for this inference, I find it “highly
probable” that additional evidence of drug-selling (i.e., the drug profile evidence at issue) did not
contribute to the jury’s conclusion that defendant and Duncan were indeed selling cocaine and
their corresponding finding that defendant possessed the cocaine with intent to deliver it.
-1-
I would affirm.
/s/ Patrick M. Meter
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