PEOPLE OF MI V DORIAN G JONES
Annotate this Case
Download PDF
STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN,
UNPUBLISHED
July 9, 2002
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v
No. 227350
Wayne Circuit Court
LC No. 99-003599
DORIAN G. JONES,
Defendant-Appellant.
Before: Zahra, P.J., and Cavanagh and White, JJ.
WHITE, J. (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I agree that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by permitting the prosecutor to
strike the previously listed witness, and that no adverse inference instruction was required. I also
agree that while the trial court erred in restricting defendant’s ability to present the jury with
evidence of decedent’s violent character, People v Harris, 458 Mich 310, 316-317; 583 NW2d
680 (1998), defendant was able to present sufficient evidence on the issue to make it unlikely
that the outcome would have been different had he been able to pursue the issue further. I also
agree that defendant’s in propria persona claims of error lack merit for the reasons stated by the
majority.
I dissent, however, from the conclusion that the trial court properly denied defendant’s
request for a voluntary manslaughter instruction and that any error was harmless. Although there
was evidence that defendant made a comment about “kicking [decedent’s] ass,” defendant
denied making such a comment. There was also evidence that defendant went to his cousin’s
house to talk things over with decedent, who had allegedly been fighting over the telephone with
defendant’s girlfriend. There was also evidence that defendant had a gun with him because he
generally carried it with him. Further, it was uncontested that decedent was in an agitated state,
and that he approached defendant with a sledgehammer and argued with him. While defendant
testified that he was about to leave when his cousin Cornell Jones called to him to “watch out,”
saying that decedent “had something,” and that he turned around, saw decedent coming at his
head with the sledge hammer, got scared and shot, there was also evidence that decedent came
out from the back of the house in a very agitated condition, carrying the sledgehammer, that he
dropped the sledgehammer and pushed defendant, and that an argument, with pushing, ensued,
and that defendant then shot decedent. There was also evidence that defendant knew decedent to
be aggressive, assaultive, and always to carry a gun.
-1-
Defendant requested the manslaughter instruction. The jury could reasonably have
concluded, based on the evidence, that decedent actually dropped the sledgehammer earlier in
the argument, so at the time defendant shot, he did not honestly and reasonably believe that his
life was in danger, but that, nevertheless, defendant fired the gun in hot blood, under the
influence of having been assaulted with a sledgehammer by a person who was in an agitated
state, whom he knew to be violent, and whom he believed to be armed with a gun. By its verdict
of second-degree, rather than first-degree, murder, the jury rejected the prosecutor’s theory that
defendant went to his cousin Pandora’s house with the intent to kill decedent, and rejected the
argument that the timing and placement of the gunshots established premeditation. Had the jury
been given the option, it might have concluded that while defendant did not have an honest and
reasonable belief that his life was in danger when he shot, his thinking was, nevertheless,
disturbed by emotional excitement to the point that a reasonable person might have acted on
impulse, without thinking twice, from passion instead of judgment.
/s/ Helene N. White
-2-
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
