Court Opinion

ID: 9575314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:57.108955+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:47.602283
License: Public Domain

M. J. Kelly, P.J.
(dissenting). Defendant was charged with four counts arising out of an armed robbery at a store in Erie, Michigan, in which a cash register and three individuals were robbed. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of from twenty-five to seventy-five years on each count upon a plea of nolo contendere.
Presumably, before pleading, defendant’s counsel computed the sentence range from the Supreme Court’s sentencing guidelines which would have predicted from the sentencing information report a guideline sentence minimum range of sixty to ninety-six months (five to eight years). At sentencing, the defendant and his counsel indicated satisfaction with the guidelines computations and had no objection to the presentence report. The prosecutor was silent so it is presumed that he also concurred. This defendant was incarcerated and under sentence of from thirteen to twenty years in state prison for convictions of delivery of heroin occurring in 1983 and 1984. These charges did not trigger consecutive sentencing consequences.
We are not privy to the defendant’s private conversations with his attorney, but the question *546is inexorably forced on the reviewer: Why would an informed defense attorney succumb to a prosecutor’s plea agreement that he would recommend that the defendant’s greatest minimum sentence be no more than twenty-five years when the maximum recommended minimum of the guidelines is eight years?
What’s going on out there? It’s difficult to make sense out of substantial sentence departures. Beyond peradventure much collective wisdom must have worked its way into the gestation process of which the sentence guidelines were born. It is estimated that the guidelines are followed in over ninety percent of the cases. But there appears to persist some unjustified disparity. Should there be a profound practical difference between a double digit mandatory minimum indeterminate sentence and a life sentence? We have ordered an evidentiary hearing in People v Hurst, 155 Mich App 573; 400 NW2d 685 (1986), in an attempt to get some enlightenment. We know that the lifer law, MCL 791.234(4); MSA 28.2304(4), is not precisely understood by the bench and bar. We are determined to track how it is applied.
I have suggested in People v Richard Johnson, 146 Mich App 809; 381 NW2d 424 (1985), that an actual minimum sentence more than two times greater than the highest recommended minimum might be an arbitrary point for having a shocked conscience. As I continue to flounder, I lean to the conclusion that a judiciary cannot assume responsibility for determining what criminals should be permanently incarcerated. The Department of Corrections and the parole board take more frequent temperatures. What is the purpose of an indeterminate sentence except to recognize that some convicts will turn around and some will not? Hard life has been a legislative prerogative. The lifer *547law requires the exercise of the parole board’s discretion. Individual judges, no matter how well intentioned, cannot arrogate to themselves the awesome arithmetic for mortal durance.
For want of a more meaningful mechanism for handling these matters, and bereft of inspiration, I’m going to say that my conscience is shocked under People v Coles, 417 Mich 523; 339 NW2d 440 (1983), by the trial court’s sentence which exceeds triple the guidelines recommended highest minimum without an individualized, convincing explanation other than to denigrate the guidelines and to restate principles which are themselves the criteria on which the guidelines were based.
I would remand for resentencing.