6.4​Other-Acts Evidence Under § 768.27

MCL 768.27 provides for the admission of other-acts evidence. MCL 768.27 states:

“In any criminal case where the defendant’s motive, intent, the absence of, mistake or accident on his part, or the defendant’s scheme, plan or system in doing an act, is material, any like acts or other acts of the defendant which may tend to show his motive, intent, the absence of, mistake or accident on his part, or the defendant’s scheme, plan or system in doing the act, in question, may be proved, whether they are contemporaneous with or prior or subsequent thereto; notwithstanding that such proof may show or tend to show the commission of another or prior or subsequent crime by the defendant.”

“[W]hile MRE 404(b) and MCL 768.27 certainly overlap, they are not interchangeable.” People v Jackson, 498 Mich 246, 269 (2015). MCL 768.27 authorizes the admission of other-acts evidence for the same purposes listed in [MRE 404(b)(2)] when one or more of the matters “is material.” Jackson, 498 Mich at 269; MCL 768.27. “Unlike MCL 768.27, however, MRE 404(b)’s list of such purposes is expressly nonexhaustive, and thus plainly contemplates the admission of evidence that may fall outside the statute’s articulated scope.” Jackson, 498 Mich at 269. Accordingly, “MCL 768.27 does not purport to define the limits of admissibility for evidence of uncharged conduct.” Jackson, 498 Mich at 269.