Court Opinion

ID: 9743116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:25:41.841584+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:39.400021
License: Public Domain

Shepherd, P.J.
(concurring). I join this Court’s majority opinion on all issues except the sentencing question, and agree that the conviction should be affirmed. I also concur in the result on the sentencing issue. However, I write separately to urge the Supreme Court to provide more specific guidance as to how sentences should be considered and reviewed by this Court in light of People v Coles, 417 Mich 523; 339 NW2d 440 (1983).
In Coles, p 550, the Supreme Court directed this *279Court to grant relief "only if [it] finds that the trial court, in imposing the sentence, abused its discretion to the extent that it shocks the conscience of the appellate court”. The' Supreme Court indicated it was concerned with two forms of abuse, namely excessive sentences and sentences which are unjustifiably disparate in length from those generally imposed in like cases. It defined the "excessively severe sentence” as "one which far exceeds what all reasonable persons would perceive to be an appropriate social response to the crime committed and the criminal who committed it”. Coles, pp 542-543. The Supreme Court further stated "that disparity in sentences which results from considerations such as the race or economic status of a defendant or the personal bias and attitude of an individual sentencing judge is unjustified and impermissible”. (Emphasis added.) Coles, p 546.
My concern is that the present framework of sentence review provides no surer means of curing such abuses than existed prior to Coles, supra. Reliance upon the "conscience of the appellate court” will not result in justice evenly applied across the state, for we, like members of society generally, vary in what our consciences dictate.
In actuality, this Court has tended to review Coles issues in a seemingly narrow fashion, so that the case is rare, indeed, when relief is granted, and the relief that is granted is limited to a remand. Coles, pp 550-551. Hence, the sentencing decision nearly always remains, as it did before, in the hands of the trial courts and is subject to the same abuses at which the Supreme Court took aim in Coles. On the other hand, if this Court were to assume a more dynamic posture in these matters, consistency might be equally lacking, owing to our *280own individual philosophies regarding treatment of offenders. We need more guidance.
The Supreme Court has ordered application of the sentencing guidelines. Administrative Order 1984-1, 418 Mich xxiv. In its order, the Court stated its purposes as (1) evaluation of the guidelines themselves, and (2) "to facilitate judicial review” pursuant to Coles, supra. The trial courts are directed to state their reasons for imposing sentences outside the minimum range recommended by the guidelines. 418 Mich xxiv. Thus, it is clear that the guidelines are subject to revision and, therefore, cannot be viewed as setting the outer limits of a sentencing judge’s discretion.
If the guidelines did set binding limits on the trial court’s discretion, I would be constrained to remand when the judge states reasons for departing from the guidelines which are already considered therein. The problem we face in these cases is that the guidelines include factors such as the severity of the offense, the past record of the defendant, and the sentences historically imposed throughout the state. If the trial judge justifies a departure from the guidelines by stating that he does so because of the nature of the offense and the record of the offender, the trial court has considered these factors twice. If we say that the trial judge may, in an individual case, place greater emphasis on any given factor by simply announcing on the record his intention to do so, the guidelines become nothing more than a litany of magic words used to mask the imposition of subjective, arbitrary and disparate sentences — the very problem which Coles and the guidelines were designed to eliminate. If the sentencing judge is not held to have abused his discretion by emphasizing a factor already included in the guidelines as a basis for departing from them, and if the record is devoid of evidence showing whether a *281sentence beyond the guidelines is disparate,1 we are furnished with no basis other than our own subjective reactions upon which to base a decision. The risk of imposing an arbitrary and disparate sentence is thus shifted from the trial courts to the Court of Appeals.
At the same time, if there is a lack of any direct connection between the guidelines and Coles review, we are left with insufficient means to evaluate the relative excessiveness of the sentences before us. If we cannot rely upon the guidelines to help form a more educated appellate "conscience”, we are left again in a realm of subjectivity, "with confidence in the criminal justice system correspondingly diminished”. Coles, p 542.
In this case, therefore, I can only follow my subjective impression of the offense and the offender. In my personal view, the crime is serious enough and the criminal sufficiently hardened to warrant the sentence imposed. However, like Judge Kelly, dissenting in People v Landis, 139 Mich App 120; 361 NW2d 748 (1984), I confess to not knowing "how sensitive, informed and rational my conscience is”. More importantly, Coles and the guidelines were designed to minimize the impact of a judge’s personal conscience and to create a more rational and uniform basis for sentencing. We should not labor under the illusion that this has been accomplished. In fact, it will never be accomplished until the Court of Appeals has been given standards to apply which remove sentence review from the same nebulous and arbitrary criteria which still exist in the trial courts. It is one thing to say that trial and appellate courts *282must be given a degree of flexibility so that each case may be adapted to its circumstances; it is quite another to base that flexibility upon a foundation no more solid than the personal consciences of individual judges.
I respectfully invite the Supreme Court to grant leave in the present case and help us resolve these fundamental difficulties in sentence review.

 I would presume that a sentence beyond the guidelines is disparate since the guidelines already take disparity into account. In any event, the record on appeal does not furnish us with any data to establish this factor and we do not do independent factual research beyond the record.