Court Opinion

ID: 9504480
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:56:36.507453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:01.573565
License: Public Domain

TAYLOR, J.
(dissenting). I agree with part I of Justice CAVANAGH’s dissent. I write separately to emphasize my concern that the majority’s opinion makes an aider and abettor in virtually any gun-related crime guilty of felony-firearm. Yet, the plain language of the statute only makes an aider and abettor guilty of felony-firearm if his aiding and abetting is directed toward the carrying or possession of the firearm.1 That is the reading we should give the statute.
Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is required that no individual be *81forced to speculate, at peril of indictment, whether his conduct is prohibited. Dunn v United States, 442 US 100, 112; 99 S Ct 2190; 60 L Ed 2d 743 (1979). This is an exercise of the rule of lenity,2 which should control the resolution of this case and cause us to conclude that all the felony-firearm statute criminalizes is aiding and abetting the carrying or possessing of a firearm, nothing more.3

 MCL 750.227b(l), the statute we are interpreting, relates to the carrying or possessing a firearm when committing or attempting to commit a felony, and states the following:
A person who carries or has in his or her possession a firearm when he or she commits or attempts to commit a felony, except a violation of section 223, section 227, 227a or 230, is guilty of a felony, and shall he imprisoned for 2 years.

 The propriety of the rule of lenity was recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in United States v Granderson, 511 US 39, 54; 114 S Ct 1259; 127 L Ed 2d 611 (1994).

 I recognize that MCL 750.2 provides that “The rule that a penal statute is to be strictly construed shall not apply to this act or any of the provisions thereof. ” It is, of course, a fundamental axiom of American law, rooted in our history as a people and requiring no citations to authority, that the requirements of the Constitution prevail over a statute in the event of a conflict.