Court Opinion

ID: 9672702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:59:04.75704+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:17.927479
License: Public Domain

R. M. Maher, P.J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent. Although I agree that the defendant’s convictions should be affirmed, I believe that he is entitled to resentencing.
In People v Braithwaite, 67 Mich App 121; 240 NW2d 293 (1976), this Court held that convictions rendered in a foreign country should never be considered by sentencing judges. The Court recognized that some foreign convictions may comport with due process standards employed in the United States. It could have required the sentencing court to examine the law of the country in which the conviction was obtained. The court rejected that approach, however, as imposing "a burdensome, difficult, and often impossible task”. 67 Mich App 123.
In People v Wallach, 110 Mich App 37; 312 NW2d 387 (1981), the Court considered the use of a foreign conviction for impeachment purposes. Disagreeing with Braithwaite, the Court held that a foreign conviction may be used for that purpose if the prosecution establishes that "the specific legal system in which defendant was convicted is fundamentally fair”. 110 Mich App 71.
In principle, I agree that a conviction obtained in a jurisdiction that provides basic safeguards to the accused should not be excluded from sentencing. However, as Braithwaite emphasizes, the inquiry into the law of a jurisdiction to determine its fairness will not work out in practice. It does not simply require researching a single point of foreign law, but instead, demands a survey of that country’s entire system of criminal justice in search of the basic components of due process. The *451problem is compounded when, as in the present case, the law to be researched is written in a language other than English. One cannot expect the busy prosecutors, defense attorneys, and courts of this state to shoulder such a burden. Thus, I believe that Braithwaite expresses the better view. I would hold that a trial court cannot consider a foreign conviction at sentencing.
In the present case, the record does not indicate whether or not the court considered the defendant’s West German conviction at sentencing. However, rather than remanding for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether that conviction was considered, I would simply remand for resentencing without consideration of that conviction.