Michigan Supreme Court Blog

Yesterday, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the trial court and the Court of Appeals in its decision in People v Beck , Docket No.  152934 (July 29, 2019) , a case out of the Saginaw Circuit Court dealing with a significant sentencing issue.  The syllabus of the opinion follows. Eric Beck was convicted as a fourth-offense habitual offender of being a felon in possession of a firearm (felon-in-possession) and carrying a firearm during the commission of a felony (felony-firearm), second offense, after a jury trial in the Saginaw Circuit Court. He was acquitted of open murder, carrying a firearm with unlawful intent, and two additional counts of felony-firearm attendant to those charges. The applicable guidelines minimum sentence range for the felon-in-possession conviction was 22 to 76 months in prison, but the court imposed a sentence of 240 to 400 months (20 to 331⁄3 years), to run consecutively to the mandatory five-year term for second-offense felony-firearm. The c...

Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals decided that a retroactive application of the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in People v Lockeridge,   498 Mich 358; 870 NW2d 502 (2015), did not violate the ex post facto  clauses  of the state and federal constitutions, even though the defendant was sentenced to a lengthier term of incarceration when his case was remanded for resentencing. In People v Steven Aderrick Odom , Docket  No. 339027, March 12, 2019 (Meter, PJ), the defendant had previously appealed his 210 to 420-month sentence for armed robbery, claiming that the trial court engaged in judicial fact-finding to increase the then mandatory sentencing guideline range.  The Supreme Court ultimately agreed and ordered the defendant to be resentenced pursuant the reasoning followed in  United States v Crosby , 397 F3d 103, 117-118 (CA 2, 2005).  Back in the trial court, the judge determined that he had been constrained by the mandatory nature of ...