Court Opinion

ID: 9727726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:49:00.297892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:29.890817
License: Public Domain

*655M. J. Kelly, P.J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent.
I am uncertain of the accuracy of the appellant’s premise: If Offense Variable 12 were differently scored, and if the trial court assessed some lower number of points resulting in a different total "offense score,” the guidelines recommended range would have been reduced from the twenty-four to forty-eight months actually scored to a score of zero to thirty-six months. The prosecutor does not concede these computations. The prosecutor says that the defendant acquiesced in the contents of the presentence report and by doing so endorsed by silence the allegation of vaginal penetration set forth in the report. I do not think we should be involved in reviewing sentence guidelines calculations. People v Clark, 147 Mich App 237; 382 NW2d 759 (1985). Defendants often choose to avoid a fight they would lose on the floor of the sentencing court only to answer the bell in the Court of Appeals when appellate counsel ferrets through the record for inconsistencies and discrepancies with which to construct error. This is such a case.
After defendant’s plea to second-degree criminal sexual conduct he was sentenced on October 14, 1985. On May 16, 1986, a timely claim of appeal was filed by court-appointed counsel. Substitute counsel was appointed on June 11, 1986, and filed a technically timely motion to remand on July 30, 1986. That motion was denied by this Court on September 24, 1986, without prejudice to filing a second motion to be supported by specific allegations of inaccuracies in the presentence report, and without prejudice to defendant’s right to seek certification of resentencing in the trial court.
Thereafter, on October 30, 1986, defendant filed another motion to remand which was not timely. We declined to remand, probably on the authority *656of People v Green, 152 Mich App 16; 391 NW2d 507 (1986), lv den 426 Mich 859 (1986), which held that a trial court’s scoring of points for offense variables will be upheld if there is any evidence that supports that scoring. Now the majority certifies a conflict with People v Green. I frankly do not think that the defendant wanted a contested hearing in the sentencing court to determine the presentence representation of penetration because the victim testified emphatically at the preliminary examination in this case that defendant had sexually penetrated her frequently from the time she was 9 Vi years old until the time that she was eleven years old. Perhaps defendant and his counsel did not want to refresh the memory of the sentencing judge with that doleful information. Under the circumstances, defendant got a lenient sentence and I surmise that he and trial counsel were contented if not jubilant. I would not give him any relief in this Court on such picayune considerations as scoring of sentence guidelines that could have and should have been attended to in the trial court.
A defendant who wishes to challenge the scoring of the sentencing guidelines must offer this challenge to the sentencing judge before raising the issue on appeal. To preserve the issue, defendant must bring it to the attention of the trial court at sentencing, by a properly filed motion within the time period for filing a motion for new trial, or by a timely filed motion to remand in the Court of Appeals. MCR 7.211(C)(1). [People v Walker, 428 Mich 261, 266; 407 NW2d 367 (1987).]
I would follow Walker and affirm.