Court Opinion

ID: 9740813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:42:05.376871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:20.390147
License: Public Domain

Kelly, P.J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur in affirming the defendant’s conviction but I would remand to the trial court for resentencing. The offense took place August 15, 1986. Defendant was tried in February of 1987 and was sentenced March 3,1987.
At sentencing the court stated:
These drugs — the amount of drugs and the packaging indicates that this was a business that was going on, sales were going on. Other people were getting there [sic] drugs in the past. Somebody had to give the drugs to Mr. Zuccarini. If that person were to sit in the jury box and see what affect [sic] the drugs had on him and him facing imprisonment, everybody would take it out on him; why did you start selling the drugs? Mr. Zuccarini is in the same posture. There are a lot of drugs around and eventually somebody — and I’m sure somebody who never used cocaine ended up with some of the drugs, and maybe two or three years or so, Mr. Zuccarini can sit in the jury box and see what affects [sic] the drug had on other people.
I am sentencing Mr. Zuccarini not because there is a war on drugs. I am sentencing Mr. Zuccarini because of his personal involvement in this case. The amount of drugs that’s involved have gotten out of hand. It’s a lot of drugs to have in someone’s possession. Mr. Zuccarini had the choice all along to get involved or not to continue. You wonder when you make enough money to stop, and all along he had that choice to stop or continue and, apparently, it culminated in continuing.
The court then sentenced defendant to a term of ten to twenty years imprisonment.
*19The language used by the trial judge at sentencing clearly indicates that he assumed that defendant was guilty of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver and that he was sentencing defendant upon the assumption that defendant was selling cocaine. This same judge had previously found defendant not guilty of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. A trial judge is not permitted to make an independent finding of guilt on another charge and to assert that guilt as the basis for a sentence, especially where the defendant was found not guilty of that charge. People v Grimmett, 388 Mich 590, 608; 202 NW2d 278 (1972); People v Glover, 154 Mich App 22, 45; 397 NW2d 199 (1986), lv den 430 Mich 867 (1988). The trial court made this impermissible assumption, so resentencing is required.
The court’s comments that in two to three years or so the defendant could sit in the jury box also bother me. It is all too common for there to be some confusion on the part of a sentencing judge regarding when a defendant could be released from prison. Nonetheless the possibility of a defendant’s early release is not a proper criterion for the trial court to consider when imposing a sentence. People v Fleming, 428 Mich 408, 422; 410 NW2d 266 (1987).
Effective March 30, 1988, 1988 PA 47 changed the penalty for this offense from ten to twenty years to five to twenty years and added a mandatory one year minimum. Under these circumstances I think defendant should be resentenced under the new penalty provision.
I would set aside defendant’s sentence and remand to the trial court for resentencing.