Court Opinion

ID: 9692709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:01:31.910241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:36.302071
License: Public Domain

M. J. Kelly, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent.
The 12- to 21-year sentence imposed here for the defendant’s commission of a nonviolent crime disturbs me. I cannot say unequivocally that it shocks my conscience, but I also do not know how sensitive, informed and rational my conscience is in comparing sentences imposed by trial courts to an "ideal penalty”, whatever that is.
The Supreme Court in People v Coles, 417 Mich 523, 542-543; 339 NW2d 440 (1983), said that an "excessively severe sentence is one which far exceeds what all reasonable persons would perceive to be an appropriate social response to the crime committed and the criminal who committed it”. It seems to me that the sentence imposed here is one which exceeds what a reasonably informed person functioning in the Michigan criminal justice system would perceive to be proportional. I am willing to opine that a conviction for presenting a bad check for payment enhanced by an earlier attempted breaking and entering conviction does not merit sentencing on the habitual charge of from 12 to 21 years in prison. I admit to foundering in a quagmire of conflicting considerations but, without a showing that defendant has violent propensities, I am expressing a conscience, though rendered insipid from overexposure to multitudes of lesser penalties for violent and heinous crimes, and confessing shock at the severity of the sentence in this case.
I would remand for resentencing.