 Roderick Pippen
At about 2:30 a.m., a tall, thin Black man walked to the driver’s window, put a gun to Sheffield’s head and ordered everyone to get out of the vehicle. Sheffield put the vehicle in gear in an attempt to get away. The man shot Sheffield once in the head and fled in a waiting car. Sheffield’s car lurched forward and rammed into a tree.
Sheffield died. A bullet was recovered during an autopsy and a shell casing was found in the car.
The police entered the casing into the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS).
Three months later, on October 18, 2008, police on patrol saw 21-year-old Roderick Pippen and two other men, Norman Clark and Michael Hudson, standing on a street corner. As the police approached, Pippen began walking away, and one officer later said he saw the butt of a pistol sticking out of Pippen’s waistband. One officer later testified that Pippen and Hudson stepped between two parked cars, each ditched a handgun under the cars, and then parted ways.
All three men were arrested. An officer said that the gun that Pippen threw away was a black Glock nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine. The gun discarded by Hudson was a .38-caliber revolver. Pippen and Hudson were each charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Clark was released.
On November 13, 2008, Hudson, 23, pled guilty in Wayne County Circuit Court and was sentenced to seven months to five years in prison. On January 27, 2009, Pippen pled guilty, and he was sentenced to two years in prison.
Subsequently, the Glock was test-fired, and the expended casing was entered into IBIS, which reported that the Glock was a potential candidate for the weapon that was used to kill Sheffield.
In August 2009, police paid a visit to the home of Sean McDuffie, who was a friend of Pippen, Hudson, and Clark. Prior to that, McDuffie had pled guilty to carrying a concealed firearm. He had been sentenced to probation under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act (HYTA), a law that allowed a defendant to have his record expunged if he complied with the terms of probation. At the time police arrived, there was an outstanding arrest warrant for McDuffie for non-compliance – a probation revocation jeopardized expungement.
The officers took him to the police station and asked him about several different shootings and showed him homicide crime scene photographs. They showed him a photograph of Pippen and asked about him. McDuffie told police that at about 10 p.m. in the summer of 2008, he had been riding in a car with Hudson and Pippen. Hudson was driving, and Pippen was in the front passenger seat. McDuffie said that Pippen asked Hudson to stop the car because he saw someone he knew. McDuffie said they stopped, Pippen got out, walked to the vehicle as if he were going to talk to the driver, and shot him. He said Pippen got back in the car, and they drove to the home of a relative of Hudson.
On May 13, 2010, an arrest warrant was issued for Pippen, who was still in the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections. He was charged with murder, illegal possession of a firearm, and illegal use of a firearm.
On June 29, 2010, a preliminary hearing was held before Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Patricia Jefferson. Camry Larry testified that before the shooting, she was standing near the driver’s side window of Sheffield’s car, which was parked on Roxbury Street near Houston-Whittier Street. She said another car “rolled” by, and a man with something white covering his face stuck his head out of the window and stared at her. She then got into the car and sat behind Sheffield. Five minutes later, a man with something white covering his face approached the driver’s side window of Sheffield’s car, told the occupants to get out, and then shot Sheffield in the head.
McDuffie testified that at some point during the summer of 2008, he saw Pippen shoot someone in the Houston-Whittier area. McDuffie said he was in a car with Pippen when they passed by the victim’s vehicle, and then circled back around to the vehicle. He said Pippen then got out of the car, walked up to the driver’s side window, shot the driver in the head with a “Glock nine,” and returned to the car.
The prosecution presented the conclusion of a firearms examiner that the Glock Pippen had admitted carrying had fired the shot that killed Sheffield.
Judge Jefferson found there was probable cause for the case to go to trial. The case was assigned to Judge Deborah Thomas. The defense then filed a motion to dismiss the case. The defense pointed to several inconsistencies between Larry’s and McDuffie’s descriptions of the shooting. Larry had testified that the shooting took place at approximately 2:00 a.m., while McDuffie had claimed that it occurred at approximately 10:00 p.m. McDuffie maintained that Pippen was not wearing anything on his face, but Larry testified that something white covered most of the shooter’s face. Larry also testified that immediately after she heard the gunshot, the car began moving, and the police found the vehicle on the grass with its front end against a tree. McDuffie said that the car did not move after Sheffield was shot. The defense noted that when police had shown McDuffie pictures of the crime scene, he said it did not look like the same place where the shooting occurred.
On September 9, 2010, Judge Thomas dismissed the charges.
The prosecution appealed, and on December 13, 2011, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed that ruling and reinstated the case. The appeals court said the prosecution had presented sufficient evidence to take the case to trial. “Here, a person could reasonably conclude that Larry and McDuffie were describing the same shooting,” the court ruled.
The case was assigned to Judge Timothy Kenny. Prior to trial, Miguel Bruce, a private investigator, interviewed Hudson, who said that McDuffie was lying. “It did not happen…he [Pippen] was not involved with it,” Hudson said. Bruce told Pippen’s defense attorney, Luther Glenn, that Hudson said he would testify for the defense. During the trial, Hudson approached Glenn and said he was willing to testify.
McDuffie was brought to court on a material witness warrant. He first testified that he did not see Pippen shoot anyone. The prosecution was allowed to treat him as an adverse witness. When shown his statement to police implicating Pippen, McDuffie then adopted his statement saying he saw Pippen shoot Sheffield. In exchange for his testimony, McDuffie had been released from his HYTA probation. He testified the prosecution “canceled” his gun possession case.
McDuffie also testified that Pippen used a “Glock nine,” but that it was not his gun. He said the gun belonged to someone named Darnell “Terry” Hicks who was by then deceased. When asked on cross-examination about his testimony at the preliminary hearing that the gun belonged to Norman Clark, McDuffie responded that Clark had bought the gun from Hicks.
McDuffie’s statement conflicted with the evidence. He said the shooting was at 10 p.m. He said there were three people in the car, but witnesses with Sheffield said there were four. McDuffie said no one was wearing a mask.
Camry Larry testified that she was standing outside of Sheffield’s car when another car containing four men passed by and one of them leaned out of the passenger seat wearing a white mask over his face. She said she then got into the second seat right behind Sheffield. She said the man with the mask suddenly appeared at the driver’s side window and ordered everyone out of the car.
McGrier and Gregory had managed to escape. She said she was on the floor of the car, with her upper body hanging out of the passenger side door, when she heard a gunshot and the car began moving. When the car hit a tree, she got out and ran.
McGrier, who was sitting in the rear right passenger seat, testified that when the gunman first approached, he struck Sheffield in the back of the head with the gun, then ordered everyone to get out, adding, “Don’t try anything slick.”
McGrier said he opened the passenger door, and Sheffield “threw the car in drive. I grabbed the young lady in the front seat [Gregory] by her arm and we jumped out and ran…while we were going to the side of the house, we heard a gunshot.”
Brett Sojda, who had been a Michigan State Police officer specializing in firearm and toolmark identification at the time of the crime, testified that he examined the bullet that was removed from Sheffield’s head. He said that the bullet was a .38-caliber slug. He said the slug was “caliber compatible” with the shell casing recovered from Sheffield’s car.
He said he also examined the bullet that was test-fired from the Glock, but was unable to conclude whether the Glock fired the bullet that killed Sheffield. “I could not determine,” he said. “The term I use: l can’t identify or eliminate. So, it could have been fired from it. It might have been fired from it. I can’t say.”
Ronald Ainslie, who had been a firearm and toolmark analyst for the Michigan State Police at the time of the crime, testified that in June 2009, he test-fired the Glock and compared the expended shell casing to the shell casing found in Sheffield’s car. He said the casing had been fired by the Glock. “I made an identification as to origin,” Ainslie said.
The defense presented no evidence.
On March 24, 2014, the jury convicted Pippen of first-degree murder and the two weapons charges. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Katherine Marcuz, a lawyer in the Michigan State Appellate Defender’s Office, was assigned to handle the appeal. Marcuz filed a motion for a new trial on the basis that Pippen’s trial defense attorney had provided an inadequate legal defense by failing to investigate Hudson and call him as a witness. At a hearing in February 2015, Glenn testified that his trial strategy was to attack McDuffie’s credibility and to suggest that McDuffie’s motivation for helping the police extended beyond the deal he received on the HYTA gun case.
Hudson testified that McDuffie’s account of the shooting was not true. He said he had never seen Pippen shoot anyone. At the time of the evidentiary hearing, Hudson was on parole, and a warrant had been issued for failing to report. Police told him before the hearing that once he tried to leave the courtroom, he would be arrested.
Hudson admitted that he had tossed a .38-caliber revolver under a car on the day in October 2008 when he and Pippen and Clark were arrested. However, he said he didn’t see Pippen toss a gun under a car.
Asked why he was willing to risk arrest, Hudson testified, “Because I know what…McDuffie had told them is a lie, and even though I’m not charged or didn’t have nothing to do with it, it’s just crazy for me to just sit up here and not tell them that this is a lie.”
On April 16, 2015, Judge Kenney denied the motion for a new trial. She ruled that given Hudson’s numerous prior convictions, Glenn’s choice not to call him as a witness was not unreasonable. The judge did not address whether the failure to call Hudson at trial would have resulted in an acquittal.
Marcuz appealed. In January 2016, the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the ruling and found that Pippen had not been adversely prejudiced by the failure to call Hudson to testify. Marcuz then sought leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.
In 2017, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the portion of the ruling that held that Glenn’s trial performance was reasonable.
“Defense counsel failed to interview a witness who may have had information concerning his client’s innocence prior to trial,” the court said. “The witness gave exculpatory statements to the defense investigator, and defense counsel was aware the witness spoke with the investigator. Failure to investigate such a witness is not a strategic decision entitled to deference.”
The court remanded the case to the trial court to decide whether, had Hudson testified, the trial outcome would have been different.
In November 2018, the trial court again denied the motion for a new trial. “Michael Hudson was not a believable witness,” Judge Kenny declared. He said that based upon his prior felony convictions and his lengthy friendship with Pippen, “a reasonable jury would not credit his testimony.”
Marcuz appealed again, but in April 2020, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Pippen’s convictions. The court ruled that since McDuffie had been declared a hostile witness, Hudson's testimony was not necessary to impeach McDuffie. Again, Marcuz petitioned the Michigan Supreme Court for leave to appeal.
On June 3, 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court vacated the convictions and ordered a new trial. The court ruled that the trial court and appeals court “misunderstand the trial proceedings and the value of Hudson’s testimony.”
The court noted that although the firearm comparison evidence tied the shell casing in Sheffield’s car to the gun connected to Pippen three months later, “McDuffie himself testified that he knew that the firearm in defendant’s possession at the time of his arrest had belonged to two different individuals, and McDuffie did not know when the firearm had changed hands. Possession of the same firearm as the one used in a crime approximately three months earlier, especially when McDuffie testified that the seized firearm had changed ownership more than once, is hardly convincing evidence of defendant’s guilt.”
“If believed, Hudson’s testimony would have established that McDuffie was lying about more than minor facts,” the court said.
On December 7, 2022, Pippen was released on bond pending a retrial.
On February 26, 2024, the charges were dismissed.
– Maurice Possley
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