Court Opinion

ID: 9738458
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:53:38.735227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:06.232076
License: Public Domain

Boyle, J.
(concurring in the result). I concur with my colleagues in reversing the Court of Appeals decision to remand the defendant’s conviction for resentencing. I cannot concur in this context, however, with the principle of appellate review of the trial judge’s habitual offender sentencing decision under an abuse of discretion standard.
I acknowledge that in People v Milbourn, 435 Mich 630; 461 NW2d 1 (1990), this Court authorized appellate review of sentences within the statutory range under an abuse of discretion standard of review based on the principle of proportionality. I also acknowledge that there may be value in the symmetry accomplished by the decision today to extend abuse of discretion appellate review to habitual offender sentences. If the Court were free to create an appellate standard of sentencing review in such cases, the standard articulated in Justice Riley’s opinion would be appropriate.
I cannot, however, join in Justice Riley’s effort, because of my continuing belief that the allowance of appellate review of statutorily valid sentences constitutes an unconstitutional incursion into the sentencing discretion delegated in this instance by the Legislature to trial judges. MCL 769.1; MSA *63828.1072, Milbourn, supra at 670-701 (Boyle, J., dissenting). While today’s decision may be no more than a logical step down the path marked out by this Court’s decision in Milboum, respect for stare decisis cannot overcome adherence to limitations on the authority of this Court.
[S]tare decisis embodies an important social policy. It represents an element of continuity in law, and is rooted in the psychologic need to satisfy reasonable expectations. But stare decisis is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision, however recent and questionable, when such adherence involves collision with a prior doctrine more embracing in its scope, intrinsically sounder, and verified by experience. [Helvering v Hallock, 309 US 106, 119; 60 S Ct 444; 84 L Ed 604 (1940).]