People of Michigan v. Arthur Larome Jemison

STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, UNPUBLISHED
April 12, 2018
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v No. 334024
Wayne Circuit Court
ARTHUR LAROME JEMISON, LC No. 15-010216-01-FC
Defendant-Appellant.
Before: SAWYER, P.J., and HOEKSTRA and MURRAY, JJ.
MURRAY, J., (concurring).
I concur with the majority’s resolution of this appeal, but write separately to express my
agreement with Chief Justice BRICKLEY’S partial dissent in People v Adair, 452 Mich. 473, 492-
494; 550 NW2d 505 (1996), where he recognized that the Adair Court’s interpretation of “past”
within MCL 750.520j(1)(a) rendered that word nugatory:
The majority finds support for its conclusion in the dictionary definition of
“past” as “ ‘having occurred during a time previous to the present.’ ” Op. at 511,
n. 8. However, the dictionary definition of “past” makes it meaningless in the
context of the statute. In order for evidence of sexual conduct to be admitted at
trial, the conduct must necessarily have occurred during a time previous to the
trial. It would be impossible to admit evidence of future sexual conduct. The
result reached by the majority could have been obtained had the Legislature
worded the exception so as to permit the admission of “evidence of the victim's
sexual conduct with the actor” or “evidence of the victim's other sexual conduct
with the actor,” rather than evidence of “the victim's past sexual conduct with the
actor.” However, as the statute is written, in order to imbue “past” with meaning,
this Court should find that only evidence of conduct that occurred before the
alleged assault may be admitted.
The majority’s construction is not possible under the rule requiring that
every word in a statute be given meaning. I conclude that the proffered evidence
does not fall within the exception to the rape-shield statute permitting the
admission of evidence of past sexual conduct because it deals with sexual conduct
that occurred after the incident. [Citation omitted.]
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Although the Adair Court’s interpretation of “past” may lead to a more practical application of
the statute, as Chief Justice BRICKLEY explained, reading “past” to include all sexual acts that
occurred prior to the admission of the evidence would include all such acts, thus making the
Legislature’s use of the limiting word “past” meaningless. We are not permitted to read a word
out of a statute. Yachcik v Yachcik, 319 Mich. App. 24, 32; 900 NW2d 113 (2017).
/s/ Christopher M. Murray
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