concluding that police officers could testify regarding their opinion that dents in the car were caused by bullets in light of their experience
How later courts described this case
- concluding that police officers could testify regarding their opinion that dents in the car were caused by bullets in light of their experience
- allowing lay opinion testimony by officers that dents in car were consistent with damage from small-caliber bullets
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
R. M. Maher, J.
(dissenting in part.) I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion which holds that the trial court made sufficient findings of fact in support of its guilty verdicts. Being the last holdout from the Davis panel, 1 I continue to believe that, at a minimum, the trial court must make specific findings of fact as to each element of the convicted offense. Absent such findings, neither the defendant nor this Court can ever be certain that the trial court correctly applied the law to the facts in pronouncing defendant guilty.
I imagine it would be a rare case where this Court, when given a certain destination, could not map out a proper path from the evidence to reach that location. But, such post hoc reconstruction of a guilty verdict reveals little about the course the trial court traveled in reaching that destination. Assuming, as we must, that the course traveled is just as important as the destination reached, the trial court should be required to make sufficient factual findings to show that its path was the proper one, i.e., the path delineated by the essential elements of the offense of which the defendant was convicted.
People v Davis, 126 Mich App 66 ; 337 NW2d 315 (1983). The other two members of the Davis panel, Judges Hood and T. M. Burns, have since repudiated their positions in that case. See People v Eggleston, 149 Mich App 665, 672, n 1 ; 386 NW2d 637 (1986); People v Taylor, 133 Mich App 762, 766, n 1 ; 350 NW2d 318 (1984).