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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS


PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v ANTHONY NEGEL SANDERS, Defendant-Appellant.

UNPUBLISHED February 10, 2005

No. 251445 Wayne Circuit Court LC No. 03-003128-01

Before: Wilder, P.J., and Sawyer and White, JJ. PER CURIAM. After a bench trial, defendant was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, MCL 750.224f, and possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony, MCL 750.227b. He was sentenced to the mandatory two-year term for the felony-firearm conviction, and a concurrent term of two years' probation for the felon in possession conviction. Defendant appeals as of right, and we affirm. The facts that led to defendant's convictions were not disputed. Detroit Police Officers Paula Redmond and Robert Nill testified that around 3:30 a.m. on February 23, 2003, they went to 16854 Beaverland in Detroit in response to two separate reports: the first, that someone heard prowling noises inside the garage, and the second, that someone was "now kicking in the side door, home invasion one," and that shots were fired. Redmond and Nill saw a man lying partially in the street and partially in the driveway. The man had been shot in the stomach. Defendant appeared in the front doorway of the house and said "I shot him." Nill went inside the house and observed "on the floor right where the kitchen and living room" met a "[l]arge rectangular" firearm, with a "high capacity magazine" inserted in the bottom.1 Nill believed that the magazine clip had broken because he saw "a lot of loose [and live] ammo laying around it." Nill noted melting snow on the gun and a "fog on it, as if it were really cold."

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Nill testified that the large gun was an Uzi "or a Mack 10."

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Nill then inquired of defendant, who stood in the living room near the front door, what had happened.2 According to Nill, defendant initially replied that the wounded man had "dropped the gun and shot himself." Nill did not believe defendant based on the appearance of the gunshot wound. When Nill asked defendant "what really happened," defendant responded that "when the deceased had broken in, he heard the noise, and had shot him in [self-]defense." Defendant told Nill that the .45-caliber gun he had used to shoot the man was upstairs. Nill went upstairs and noticed in an open doorway of the main, finished room, "just protruding past the doorway in the eaves, . . . the buttstock of a long gun," a high capacity magazine, and a "blue steel automatic that appeared to be a .45." Nill collected the guns, removed their ammunition magazines, and "ejected the round that was in the chamber of the .45." Detroit Police Officer Moises Jimenez testified that he went to 16854 Beaverland at around 5:00 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. on February 23, 2003, and that he obtained a written statement from defendant.3 In the written statement, defendant explained that he had fallen asleep between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. the previous evening; he awoke to "the sound of kicking in a side door and . . . beeping"; he locked his bedroom door and retrieved his "gun off the night stand and squatted next to [his] bed"; the bedroom door flew open after someone kicked it three times; defendant "shot one time towards the door and . . . heard the guy run out"; defendant phoned the police from the bedroom; and after hearing "the guy screaming for help," defendant "went out there and looked at him" before reentering the house. The statement also contained defendant's clarification that he had fired only one shot with a .45-caliber semiautomatic weapon in the direction of the two or three people who had entered his house. Defendant then signed the written statement. Defense counsel and the prosecutor stipulated that defendant had a felony conviction in 2002, and that he was "ineligible to possess a firearm on February 23, 2003." The circuit court found defendant guilty of both the felon in possession and felony-firearm charges. I Defendant first asserts that a person (including a convicted felon) has a constitutional right to possess a fiream inside his own home for self defense purposes. This Court reviews de novo questions of constitutional law. People v Swint, 225 Mich App 353, 364; 572 NW2d 666 (1997). We conclude that defendant's felon in possession conviction did not violate his state constitutional right to keep and bear arms in defense because (1) the felon in possession statute generally constitutes a reasonable restriction on the constitutional right to bear arms, Swint, supra, and (2) although defendant may have used his firearm in reasonable self-defense, he

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Nill stated that defendant was the only civilian he saw inside the house after the police arrived.

Jimenez also saw at the house three weapons, "an AK-47 type assault rifle, a .45 auto and a . . . Mack 10 look alike" that he believed was a nine-millimeter weapon.

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possessed the firearm for some period before he used it, and there is no indication that his prior possession was for self-defense. The prosecutor correctly cites Swint, supra, for the proposition that the statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms, MCL 750.224f, is constitutional notwithstanding the state constitution's guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms, Const 1963, art I,

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