Court Opinion

ID: 9566857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:44:04.30173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:40:41.569534
License: Public Domain

M. J. Kelly, J.
(dissenting in part). I dissent only as to the sentence imposed on defendant of from sixty-five to one hundred years on each of the assault with intent to commit murder counts. I do not disagree with the majority <?n the vindictiveness question. It is not my presumption to quarrel with the sentiment of this learned trial judge that defendant should be "off the streets forever.” But I am in the dead of midnight as to a trial judge’s sentencing power in terms of a defendant’s passage through time to eternity. The Legislature has said that a life sentence (other than hard life, for first-degree murder and major drug traffic) is pa-rolable.1 The Supreme Court has said in People v Johnson, 421 Mich 498, 428; 364 NW2d 654 (1984), that life sentences for Proposition b2 crimes are parolable. We have said in People v Hurst, 155 Mich App 573; 400 NW2d 685 (1986), that we need some daylight on the effect of indeterminate sentences vis-á-vis the corporal work of mercy known as the sentencing guidelines, to determine if our conscience is shocked under People v Coles, 417 Mich 523; 339 NW2d 440 (1983).
I see the issue here as being whether the holding in People v Payne, 386 Mich 84, 97; 191 NW2d 375 (1971), is implicated. There the Supreme Court held that "the imposition of a harsher sentence upon reconviction following appellant’s] successful appeal was constitutionally impermissible . . . .” See, North Carolina v Pearce, 395 US 711, 726; 89 S Ct 2072; 23 L Ed 2d 656 (1969). It is obvious to me that at the time the learned trial judge first *85sentenced this defendant he reasonably believed he had put him on ice for the duration. When he came up for resentencing, People v Johnson, supra, had been decided and the Proposition b durable life sentence balloon had been punctured. If malfunctions exist in the administration of the Department of Corrections and the parole board, I doubt they can be cured by unleashing huge indeterminate sentences which are impossible to serve out. There is a good deal of focusing and fine tuning yet to be accomplished. With the lifer law3 applying to the sentence, it seems to me that a sixty-five-year minimum indeterminate sentence of a thirty-four-year-old man, even with maximum permissible credits, is harsher than a life sentence.4
In the meantime, I would reverse and remand for entry of life sentences on each of the assault with intent to murder 

 MCL 791.234(4); MSA 28.2304(4).

 MCL 791.233b; MSA 28.2303(3)

 See n 1.

 People v Lindsey, 139 Mich App 412; 362 NW2d 304 (1984), and People v McNeal, 156 Mich App 379; 401 NW2d 650 (1986), are wrongly decided. If the parole board can’t reach an indeterminate sentence because of the time clock it is a harsher sentence than parolable life.