People v. Collins

Defendant was convicted of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon and being an armed habitual criminal. The trial court merged the unlawful weapon by a felon count into the armed habitual criminal count and sentenced defendant to 7 ½ years in prison. On appeal, defendant challenged his conviction on the grounds that the State improperly presented audio recordings from a body-worn camera that were subject to exclusion as hearsay and the appellate court reversed defendant’s conviction. The supreme court granted the State’s petition for leave to appeal which raised the issue of whether the Law Enforcement Officer Body-Worn Camera Act provided that recordings are admissible regardless of whether the recordings hearsay. The supreme court dismissed the appeal finding that the State did not address that question and had abandoned its argument that body camera audio recordings were automatically admissible and did not constitute hearsay. (THEIS, ANNE M. BURKE, NEVILLE, MICHAEL J. BURKE, CARTER, and HOLDER WHITE, concurring)