Court Opinion

ID: 9572368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:41:10.897344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:38.944761
License: Public Domain

Michael J. Kelly, P.J.,
(dissenting). I would *342affirm the sentence of five to fifteen years for defendant’s plea-based conviction of involuntary manslaughter. (The majority does not advert to the felony-firearm sentence and neither does the appellant. I assume that sentence is affirmed.)
The trial court was faced with alternative scoring interpretations that, in my opinion, were equally plausible. Although the trial court opted for the ten-point scoring of ov 3, it was influenced no doubt by the factual predicate that was related in the presentence report of November 7, 1991, and at the plea proceedings, including: (1) a seventeen-year live-in relationship between defendant and the victim, who defendant likened to a "beloved spouse”; (2) a life of apparent wine addiction and basic-level existence of nineteen years without gainful employment; (3) blood alcohol tests on both defendant and the victim that showed three times the level of serious impairment, i.e., 0.29 for defendant several hours after arrest and 0.34 for the victim post-mortem; (4) vociferous argument between the parties both in and out of the bar at which they were last drinking, including defendant throwing a glass of beer in the face of a bar patron and tipping trash barrels on the sidewalk; (5) a late-night shotgun discharge by defendant on the street outside her second-floor apartment; and (6) the reloading of the shotgun before the killing, although defendant claimed she thought the gun was not loaded when she pointed it at the victim.
The majority opines that scoring ten points for involuntary manslaughter under ov 3 is error, either because involuntary manslaughter cannot be scored under ov 3 or because defendant was originally scored zero points on this variable at her original sentencing. I think it is arguable that involuntary manslaughter can be scored ten points in the category of "gross negligence amounting to *343an unreasonable disregard for life,” but I do not dissent on that basis. I dissent because the trial judge conceded the possibility that the scoring should be zero and that the minimum sentence under the guidelines should be one not exceeding thirty-six months, and then deliberately, consciously, and intentionally exceeded the guidelines’ recommendation in order to respond adequately to the crime and the criminal in a measured, proportionate, and reasonable fashion. I find no abuse of discretion and no reason for resentencing. In essence, this lady got drunk, argued with her live-in lover, and then loaded, pointed, and pulled the trigger of a single-shot .410 gauge shotgun, from a distance of six to nine feet from the victim, with the result of blowing the victim’s heart and life away instantly.
The trial judge said:
[I]f . . . the appropriate guidelines should be from one to three, I advisedly, knowingly, and intentionally exceed those guidelines. So I don’t want to hear back from the Court of Appeals on the basis that I should have mentioned this.
[A three-year minimum] would be completely unsatisfactory, I think, to anyone with normal intelligence, that you can kill somebody and get away with a three-year prison sentence. I am also not unfamiliar with the fact that . . . the Department of Corrections, when somebody has about two years left they get one of their home improvement programs where somebody comes back into the community .... I’ll speak right out and say that this is asinine. As a result I exceed those limits.
[People v Milbourn, 435 Mich 630; 461 NW2d 1 (1990)] says we have to look at the seriousness of the conduct. So far as the victim is concerned, it’s probably one of the most serious acts that ever *344took place in her life because she no longer is alive and she’s now some number of feet within the ground.
I find no reliance by the trial court on any scoring error. I find no abuse of discretion. On the contrary, I find the trial court’s observations totally appropriate and its departure from the recommended range by less than a factor of two to be proportional to the crime and the criminal.
I would affirm.