Appeals court throws out 2019 child sex crime verdict
An appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Shepherd man convicted by a jury of molesting a young girl in 2017.
A three-judge panel with the 4th Court of Appeals overturned the 2019 conviction of Brendan Drandell, 39, of Shepherd, saying that Drandell was denied a fair trial because the prosecution introduced evidence that was irrelevant but had a poisoning effect on the jury.
Drendall was convicted by a jury of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and accosting a child for immoral purposes. He was sentenced to just shy of 12 years to 30 years for the first charge and eight to 15 years for the second.
He was acquitted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The panel overturned the verdict based on testimony about Drandell that it said was irrelevant but probably influenced it.
Principal Trial Attorney Mark Kowalczyk, who tried the case for the Isabella County Prosecutor’s Office, had called witnesses to testify that Drendall had a drug problem and was prone to fits of rage while drinking. A witness also said that he had a special stick he used to hit children.
The prosecution argued to the court of appeals that the testimony couldn’t have had much impact on the jury because the jury only convicted him on second-degree criminal sexual conduct while exonerating him on the more se
rious change.
The appellate panel disagreed.
“Yet, given that the jury twice asked what would happen if they could not reach a unanimous verdict, we cannot discount the likelihood that the testimony that Drendall repeatedly subjected the complainant and her mother to physical violence likely influenced the jury to conclude that even if it did not fully believe the complainant’s testimony, Drendall was nevertheless a violent man who abused women and children, thereby making him worthy of punishment even if there was reasonable doubt as to the charged crime,” they wrote in their published opinion.
They also criticized Circuit Court Judge Mark Duthie for not telling the jury to ignore the improper evidence.
“Finally, given that Drendall’s trial was infected with repeated instances of highly prejudicial other-acts evidence, allowing the jury to convict on the basis that he was a bad man, we conclude that the fairness of the judicial proceedings was seriously affected, so reversal is warranted,” the opinion reads.
They also told Duthie to re-examine excluding testimony from another man accused of molesting the same girl in nearly the same way in 2014.
Drendall’s attorney had hoped to call as a witness the ex-boyfriend of the girl’s grandmother, who in 2014 was accused of also molesting the girl. In the appellate decision, it indicated that the grandmother’s ex-boyfriend was going to testify that the allegations were similar to those of Drendall’s and that he believed the girl’s mother was ultimately behind them over a personal grudge.
That case was ultimately not prosecuted.
Duthie rejected allowing the man to testify on the grounds that his testimony would involve speculation.
The appeals court objected to that, saying Duthie erred in not considering whether the commonalities of the two constituted evidence of a “common plot or scheme” by the mother “to induce the complainant to initiate sexual-abuse allegations against men that she wanted out of her life.”