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 ...

Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of Farrin Lee Felton after the Court determined that the trial court in Kalkaska County had impermissibly allowed the introduction of MRE 404(b) evidence in Felton's drug delivery trial. After the defendant and two others were pulled over by the the police, the officers arrested the driver, Johnson, for driving on a suspended license. Upon searching him, the officers discovered a quantity of cocaine and heroin secreted in his underwear.  Johnson was charged with two counts of possession with intent to deliver less than 50 grams.  He worked out a deal with the prosecution where his two 20-year felonies would be reduced to simple possession with a sentence agreement of probation under Sec. 7411, in exchange for his testimony that Felton, the back seat passenger, was the person actually guilty of possessing with intent to deliver the drugs and that he had given them to Johnson to hide when the trio was pulle...

Much has been written and talked about in the media regarding the recent United States Supreme Court's decision in Carpenter v United States and I would never presume to weigh in any more succinctly or insightfully than Professor Orin Kerr, Frances R. and John J. Duggan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law.  Therefore, I will simply cite to his learned analysis of this monumental decision.  The question of the scope of the Government's ability to seek cell site data without the benefit of a search warrant is still in question, but should anyone need any extensive analysis of the opinion, Professor Kerr's analysis can be found here .  My  congratulations  go out to Detroit Attorney Harold Gurewitz for his persistence in preserving the issue and well-deserved victory.  Enjoy.

On January 24, in the case of People of the State of Michigan v Boban Temelkoski , the Michigan Supreme Court held the state’s sex offender registration scheme  unconstitutional  on due process grounds.  Temelkoski had pleaded guilty under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act with the expectation that no collateral consequences would attach to the disposition if he successfully completed its conditions.  The Court emphasized, " The statute in effect at the time of defendant’s plea further provided that “[a]n assignment of an individual to the status of youthful trainee as provided in this chapter is not a conviction for a crime, and the individual assigned to the status of youthful trainee shall not suffer a civil disability or loss of right or privilege following his or her release from that status because of his or her assignment as a youthful trainee.”    However, several years later a registration requirement was enacted and applied retroactively to his case...

The Michigan Supreme Court, in the past few days, has issued a number of opinions related to crimes, criminal procedure and sentencing.  Significantly, the Court overruled a 25-year-old decision regarding the interpretation of the felony firearm statute, when, in People v Dwayne Wilson , Docket No. 154039 (July 25, 2017) , the Court held that a defendant may be sentenced as a third offender (mandatory minimum 10 years imprisonment, consecutive to any sentence for the underlying offense) even though his two (2) prior convictions arose out of the same occurrence.  Justice Joan Larsen wrote the unanimous opinion that overruled  People v Stewart , 441 Mich 89 (1992). The trial court, Macomb County Circuit Judge James Biernat, Jr., had ruled that Wilson's two prior convictions for felony firearm from one prior case amounted to two (2) prior convictions for felony firearm and that the Supreme Court's decision in Stewart was no longer good law because it had relied on ca...

In this interlocutory application for leave, the Michigan Court of Appeals yesterday published it's previously unpublished opinion in People v Calvin Kelly , Docket No. 331731 , reversing the Kalamazoo Circuit Court's decision to exclude evidence offered by the prosecution pursuant to MRE 404(b). Kelly is charged with kidnapping, three (3) counts of first degree CSC and assault with intent to commit CSC.  The allegations arise from an incident in 2008.  Kelly has readily admitted to having sexual intercourse with the complainant (the prosecution possesses favorable DNA evidence), but asserts that the encounter was consensual because the complainant is a prostitute and is merely upset because Kelly did not pay her. Kelly's DNA, however, has linked him to a total of five (5) CSC complaints, and he has admitted to having intercourse with three (3) others.  In each case, which span a timeframe from 1985 to 2010 and occurred in four (4) different states, Kelly told the s...