Court Opinion

ID: 9659261
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:36:31.993522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:05.623878
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(dissenting). I have signed Justice Kavanagh’s opinions in these cases because I am in accord with his view in Ford that prosecution for a credit card crime must be brought under the more specific credit card statute1 and not under the uttering and publishing a false instrument statute,2 and in Gonzales and Howard that the prosecutors misused their charging power when they charged Gonzales and Howard with larceny in a building3 rather than larceny under $100.4
I
The several branches of government are not sovereign entities. The separation of powers is not absolute. The government is one of shared powers. The lines demarcating the powers of the several branches are not absolutely defined. Their powers are restrained by the checks and balances of the powers of the other branches.
A prosecutor exercises delegated power; his *116"duties and powers shall be provided by law”,5 that is to say, by the Legislature. The manner in which he exercises that legislatively delegated power is subject to judicial review.
II
While the Legislature has for some offenses provided that repeat offenders shall or may be punished more severely, it has not so provided for shoplifting or improper use of a credit card. In converting larceny under $100 (a 90-day misdemeanor) and larceny in a building (a 4-year felony) and in converting improper use of a credit card (a 4-year felony) and uttering and publishing (a 14-year felony) into alternative prosecutions for the same misconduct, the prosecutor has, in effect, made himself the definer or giver of the law as well as the enforcer of the law. In so doing, he has exceeded the authority which has been or could properly be given to him.6
The prosecutor has a broad charging discretion. He may in the exercise of that discretion refuse to charge at all, agree to divert an offender from some or all aspects of the criminal justice system, choose upon an assessment of the facts the appropriate charge, or in exchange for a plea of guilty consent to accept a plea to a lesser offense or make recommendations regarding the sentence or both.
The preliminary examination and the motion for *117directed verdict safeguard against a charge not factually supported. Judicial involvement in the taking of a guilty plea is a safeguard in the plea-bargaining process. Persons diverted from the criminal justice system generally have little cause for complaint.
Where charging decisions are based not on an assessment of the facts of the offense but on other considerations, there is, absent safeguards, a danger of abuse. The judge’s power to set a minimum sentence or to place an offender on probation is not a safeguard against misuse of the charging power in the instant cases where the difference for those sentenced to prison is between a maximum sentence of 90 days or 4 years or between a maximum sentence of 4 years or 14 years.
It is for the Legislature to decide whether to grade shoplifting or improper use of a credit card based on the commission of prior offenses. A prosecutor cannot lawfully create a grading system of his own.7 If the laws are inadequate, prosecutors should seek legislative revision and thereby attempt to obtain authority to do what they think is required for sound law enforcement, and not charge the same misconduct under different statutes in order to accomplish by indirection what the Legislature has not specifically authorized.
Absent legislation authorizing a prosecutor to charge a repeat offender with an increased pen*118alty, it is beyond his proper authority to do so.8 The courts should provide safeguards against such encroachment on the law-making power by refusing to allow a prosecutor to charge the same misconduct under different statutes.9
Because the Legislature has not delegated (and I am disinclined to believe could delegate) to a prosecutor the authority to grade offenses, the prosecutors should be deemed bound by whatever construction they place on the statutes.
If prosecutors generally characterize shoplifting in a building as larceny under $100 or signing a sales slip improperly charged to a credit card as a violation of the credit card statute, they should not be heard to characterize it ad hominem as larceny in a building or, as the case may be, uttering and publishing. All persons who shoplift in a building or so improperly sign a sales slip charged to a credit card should be charged with the lesser offense or with the greater offense.
I recognize that prosecutors might charge everyone with the greater offense and then plea bargain for the lesser offense ad hominem. That might or would be for prosecutors to decide in the first instance and then for the courts and the Legislature to consider.
Riley, J., took no part in the decision of these cases._

 1967 PA 255, MCL 750.157m-750.157u; MSA 28.354(13)-28.354(20).

 MCL 750.249; MSA 28.446.

 MCL 750.360; MSA 28.592.

 MCL 750.356; MSA 28.588.

 Const 1963, art 7, § 4.

 The Legislature could not constitutionally authorize local laws making it a felony in one part of the state to shoplift and a misdemeanor in another. Const 1963, art 4, § 29.

 A prosecutor may see offenders who have not been deterred by a misdemeanor charge and who, in his judgment, need a stronger dose than another misdemeanor charge. My point is not that I disagree, but rather that it is not his choice. Under our system of government, it is the Legislature which makes the laws and the prosecutor who enforces or declines to enforce them.

 It would similarly be improper for the prosecutor to consider crimes of which the accused has neither been charged nor convicted. In Ford, it appears that a consideration that entered the prosecutor’s decision to charge uttering and publishing was that Ford was suspected of numerous fraudulent credit card purchases.

 In Genesee Prosecutor v Genesee Circuit Judge, 391 Mich 115; 215 NW2d 145 (1974), and Genesee Prosecutor v Genesee Circuit Judge, 386 Mich 672; 194 NW2d 693 (1972), the circuit court sought to substitute its own evaluation of the facts for that of the prosecutor.