Court Opinion

ID: 9659818
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:55:08.812007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:11.751091
License: Public Domain

D. C. Riley, J.
(dissenting). The majority seems to impart two, somewhat contradictory, lessons in the case at bar.
On one hand, the majority reaffirms its ostensive support of People v Grable, 57 Mich App 184; 225 NW2d 724 (1974), and on the other it cites with apparent approval People v Gray, 66 Mich App 101; 238 NW2d 540 (1975).
Grable held that a remand for resentencing by a different judge is warranted where a sentencing court "may have enhanced the sentence imposed” (Id. at 189) in response to a convicted defendant’s adamant, post-verdict proclamations of innocence:
"[W]e believe that an accused has the right to maintain his innocence after conviction. No additional penalty is to be imposed for continuing to proclaim one’s innocence. ” Grable, supra, at 188-189. (Emphasis added.)
In Gray, supra, a panel of this Court, interpreting Grable as factually inapposite, held that lack of remorse for an undenied crime may be taken *46into account at sentencing. If the facts in Gray clearly support such a proposition, I would not be dismayed by the holding; sadly, however, they do not. As the majority recognizes, defendant Gray at trial "offered a story inconsistent with guilt”. At sentencing, however, the trial court in Gray commented on the mention made by probation officials of Gray’s supposed lack of remorse without elaborating on how the probation authorities arrived at this conclusion. Despite the absence of documentation concerning Gray’s reported lack of contrition, this Court concluded that defendant Gray did not deny his guilt. Without the benefit of the probation report, I would not have reached the same conclusion quite so readily.
At any rate, it is clear that a defendant, who in fact admits his guilt yet eschews regret for his actions, reveals by his unrepentance a relevant facet of his character that can be considered at sentencing. It is quite another matter, however, to say that a defendant, who personally or through his counsel maintains his innocence even after a guilty verdict, should be penalized for failing to express remorse regarding a crime he denies committing. This is precisely the kind of "additional penalty” that Grable, supra, condemns. People v Towns, 69 Mich App 475, 479; 245 NW2d 97 (1976).
If as the majority suggests "[a]n admission of guilt under pressure offers no insight into defendant’s character that would be helpful to the sentencing court”, then the fact, rather than the source, of such pressure should be determinative. Whether the pressure to admit guilt and show remorse flows directly from a judge’s badgering questions or obliquely from the subtle inducement of the present decision, the evil is the same.
On reflection, it should be immediately apparent *47that inducing an assertedly innocent defendant to admit guilt and pressuring, albeit indirectly, a defendant to express remorse for a crime whose perpetration he denies are but two sides of the same coin. By its decision today, the Court bestows its imprimatur on, and thus encourages, the longstanding practice by which defendants, whether innocent or guilty, are motivated to appear contrite in the hope of reaping a lenient sentence. Why we should exalt such an unfortunate tactic to the level of doctrine escapes me completely.
Another disturbing aspect of the present decision is that, despite a laudable effort to clarify this muddled area, the majority perpetuates the confusion. At one point, the majority opinion indicates that a judge may "properly giv[e] * * * consideration to remorse or its absence at sentencing”. Yet later in the opinion we are told that a court may note "the absence of a factor which might, if it were present, encourage the court to impose a particular sentence”. There is more than a mere semantic difference between giving consideration to the absence of remorse and noting the absence of remorse as a factor to be disregarded in passing sentence. Without a clarification of its precise holding, the case at bar, rather than serving as a beacon to sentencing judges, enshrouds them in still greater darkness.
Assuming one accepts the more limited version of the majority’s holding, namely, that a judge may inform a defendant who is reluctant to admit guilt that remorse is not among the mix of factors to be weighed in passing sentence, the facts in the present case are illsuited to such a proposition. The lower court did more than merely relay this information to defendant. The following statement of the court below at the hearing on defendant’s *48motion for resentencing, taken together with the judge’s similar statement at sentencing, convinces me that the judge’s remarks were in essence thinly guised invitations to the defendant to recant his misdeed:
"I am sure you have heard before, we still have the situation where the defendant refuses to admit he is guilty. If ever a man is going to be rehabilitated effectively, the first thing he has got to do is say I am [guilty], admit it, and then I am sorry. We always run into a problem where somebody is convicted in the trial, if they pled guilty, then they are saying I am guilty, to go through the trial and still deny it afterward, then you have a problem then (sic). If you are guilty, why don’t they admit it, isn’t that the first step in rehabilitation, that is always a fact to be considered by the Court, and the attitude of the person toward the crime that was committed.” (Emphasis added.)
I believe that enhancing the defendant’s sentence because he declined the judge’s not so subtle invitations to admit guilt is just as egregious as the error found in Grable, supra. The absence of remorse in a convicted defendant who disclaims his guilt should be disregarded in passing sentence.
This does not mean, however, that an expression of contrition by a defendant who acknowledges his crime should be ignored by the sentencing court. Rather, a sentencing judge should strive to temper with a healthy skepticism "the natural tendency to adjust [the] sanctions” imposed on a repentant defendant. The courts should be leery of a defendant’s newfound, and possibly feigned, declarations of penitence. I trust that this state’s seasoned trial judges, having frequent opportunity to assess the credibility of persons appearing before them, will *49be able in most cases to distinguish the sincere from the contrived.
Before closing, one last point should be addressed. I agree with the majority that the lower court’s frequent reference to a "policy” concerning defendants convicted of drug delivery offenses was not improper once the judge explained that policy related to the gravity of such crimes and not to a refusal to individualize the sentences imposed. However, I would caution sentencing courts to refrain from the use of the term "policy” or phrases of like import in passing sentence because, as this case illustrates, such terms may engender the misimpression that the individualization of sentencing is a rule honored more in the breach than the observance.
I would remand this case for resentencing by a different judge because of the distinct possibility that defendant’s refusal to confess guilt and express remorse caused the court to enhance the sentence imposed.