Court Opinion

ID: 9704637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:41:40.349521+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:03.836290
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(dissenting). The felony-firearm section of the Penal Code provides that "[a] person who carries or has in his possession a firearm at the time he commits or attempts to commit a felony, except the violation of section 227” (emphasis supplied), is guilty of the offense, and shall be imprisoned for two years.1 Section 227 proscribes carrying a dangerous weapon "concealed on or about” the person.2
Although the felony-firearm section excepts carrying a concealed weapon, defendants Mark A. Sturgis and Charles W. Kester were convicted in separate trials of felonious assault,3 felony-firearm, and carrying a concealed weapon. I would hold that the Legislature did not intend that a person convicted of felony-firearm could be convicted of carrying a concealed weapon on the basis of the same transaction.
In holding that the Legislature intended that a person could be convicted of both felony-firearm *414and carrying a concealed weapon, the majority observes that felonious assault, rather than carrying a concealed weapon, is the predicate felony in the instant cases.
In every case where the offense of felony-firearm is committed, the defendant will, however, have committed, while carrying or possessing a dangerous weapon, a predicate felony other than the felony of carrying a concealed weapon.
It will be a rare case indeed when a defendant, guilty of felony-firearm, will not also have carried the firearm "concealed on or about his person” and thus also have committed the felony of carrying a concealed weapon.
The majority’s construction deprives the statutory exception respecting the offense of carrying a concealed weapon of operational meaning except in the atypical case where the firearm was not at any time during the criminal episode concealed on or about the person of the offender, is contrary to the spirit of the statute, and serves no purpose other than to provide still another area for plea bargaining and to increase the maximum sentence that may be imposed in respect to an underlying offense from four to five years where, as in the instant cases, the maximum sentence for the predicate felony is a relatively low four years.4_

 MCL 750.227b; MSA 28.424(2).

 MCL 750.227; MSA 28.424.

 MCL 750.82; MSA 28.277.

 The maximum sentence that may be imposed for carrying a concealed weapon is five years. See n 2. The maximum sentence that may be imposed for felonious assault is four years. See n 3 and MCL 750.503; MSA 28.771. The sentences for both offenses run concurrently.