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People v. Goodsell3/25/2003
UNPUBLISHED
Defendant appeals by right from his convictions by a jury of two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, MCL 750.520b. The trial court, applying a second-offense habitual offender enhancement under MCL 769.10, sentenced him to two concurrent terms of fifteen to thirty years' imprisonment. We affirm. This appeal is being decided without oral argument under MCR 7.214(E).
The trial occurred on May 29 and 30, 2001. The prosecutor called the victim, Mary Ann Van Meter, as an adverse witness. Van Meter testified as follows: She did not want to testify in the case and had asked the court to drop the charges. She had been in continuous contact with defendant since his incarceration the previous June, and she and defendant had become engaged since his arrest. She met defendant in February 1999, and their relationship proceeded well until May 1999, when two men waved at her while she and defendant were camping. Defendant called her a "whore" after this incident because he thought she was flirting with the men, but Van Meter believed that by doing so defendant was merely "protecting his interest" in her. Defendant also became angry during the camping trip when Van Meter began preparing a salad that he had wanted to prepare.
Van Meter further testified that in June 1999, defendant became angry with her because she went shopping for a bathing suit, and "he didn't want me wasting my time on clothes." He ridiculed her body and became so angry that he drove off at a very high speed with Van Meter in his vehicle. Van Meter was frightened and wanted to return to her home, and defendant called her several abusive names and told her that she would go home "in a body bag." Another time in 1999, defendant threatened her during a trip to the point that she became nervous.
Van Meter further testified that in July 1999, she obtained a personal protection order (PPO) against defendant. In her petition for the PPO, she stated that defendant had choked her, slapped her, and spit on her. Approximately seven days after obtaining the PPO, she wrote to the court to try and get it dismissed because defendant "promised to never do it again" and because she missed him. She admitted that defendant threatened to burn down her house if she did not get the PPO dismissed. She also admitted that defendant would sometimes beg for her affection on the telephone but "in the next breath or the next phone call" would threaten her with harm. On January 1, 2000, she telephoned the police because defendant told her that "he could kill me if he had to lose me."
A tape was played into the record. Although a transcript of the tape was not provided to this Court, it appears that the tape contained a message from defendant that was left on Van Meter's telephone answering machine. Van Meter admitted that on the tape, defendant stated that he wanted to harm the father of Van Meter's son. In another tape played for the jury but not transcribed for this Court, defendant threatened to stab Van Meter with a knife that she kept under her bed for protection.
Van Meter further testified that she ran a beauty salon out of her home and that defendant did not like her to have male clients. He accused Van Meter of having sex with the male clients. In June 2000, Van Meter was seeing defendant and was also seeing another man, William Christensen. Defendant left a message for her in which he "demand " that she be home around 10:30 p.m. on June 19, 2000, to receive a telephone call from him. She had spoken to him earlier in the day and told him that she could not promise to be home at that time, and in fact she came home around 1:30 a.m. She found that defendant had left another message f
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