People v. Merriweather, 97745
| Decision Date | 30 December 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 97745,No. 2,97745,2 |
| Citation | 447 Mich. 799,527 N.W.2d 460 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bashara MERRIWEATHER, Defendant-Appellee. Calendar |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Thomas L. Casey, Sol. Gen., John D. O'Hair, Pros. Atty., Timothy A. Baughman, Chief of Research, Training and Appeals, and Carolyn M. Breen, Asst. Pros. Atty., Detroit, for the People.
Carolyn A. Blanchard, and Sheila N. Robertson, Detroit, for defendant.
Sheila N. Robertson, Detroit, for amicus curiae Crim. Defense Attys. of Mich.
Sandra Girard, Jackson, for amicus curiae Prison Legal Services of Mich., Inc.
The question presented is the legality of the defendant's sentence. The Court of Appeals, in a two-to-one decision, held that the defendant's sentence of 60 to 120 years "violate[s] the proportionality requirement of Milbourn " 1 because it is "three times the guidelines' recommendation." 201 Mich.App. 383, 385-386, 506 N.W.2d 888 (1993). We disagree, and reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals.
The conduct constituting these offenses is so depraved that it has few, if any, comparables in the thousands of criminal cases this Court has reviewed. The defendant himself 2 described how he terrorized, tortured, burned, and sodomized eighty-four-year-old Marie Green; then left her for dead:
On the night before, I looked at the garbage in front of this house and I saw a small bag to be picked up, so I figured it was an old person that lived there by themself. So I waited a couple of days and went back. So I waited a couple of days and went back there in the morning. I went to the back of the house and found a large rock. I went to the side door and threw it through the side window. I opened the door and went in the house. I walked through the house until I found the lady in her bedroom. It was early in the morning and it was already light out. The lady was awake. I asked her where was her money. She said what was all that noise. I looked at her and said don't play with me, where is all your money. She started to act weird, and I couldn't understand what she was saying. I hit her in the face with my hand and kept asking her for her money. She kept saying I don't have any money, and I kept hitting her in the face. I found a pair of panty hose in her drawer and tied her up on the bed. I started walking around the house searching everything and throwing things on the floor looking for money. I didn't find anything, and I started to get angry. I found an egg shaped candy dish and I took it back to her and hit her in the head with it. It broke when I hit her. She kept saying I don't have any money. So I saw a light bulb on the floor, and I picked it up and broke it on her head. When I hit her with the light bulb, it broke and cut me through my glove and I really got angry, so I went to the kitchen. But before I went to the kitchen, I saw this black thing on the floor, so I figured if I stuck that in her she would tell me where the money was. I pulled her gown up to her waist and put this black thing in her rear. After I stuck it in her rear, she started going to the bathroom all over the place, her bowels started moving. Her bowels really started moving. I pulled it out and put it on the floor and went to the kitchen. I got a knife from the kitchen drawer. It was long with a white plastic handle. I went back into her room. I asked her again where was the money and started to hit her with the knife on her butt. She kept screaming and I kept hitting her. She didn't tell me, so I kept hitting her. She asked me why I was torturing her, and I said tell me where the money is at and I'll quit. I left her and went to the kitchen and heated up the knife. I put another knife on the burner from the kitchen drawer to light up when I went back to her room with the one I had just got hot. I started burning her with it on her butt. She still wouldn't tell me where the money was at. I kept getting madder and madder. I ran back to the kitchen and put the knife up and got the one that was on the burner. It was a smaller knife. I went back to her room and put that on her butt and she still wouldn't tell me. I left her and yanked the phone off of the wall. I walked back into the kitchen and opened up the stove and blew the pilot light out and turned on all the gas and stood there smelling it. I stood there smelling the gas for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, just smelling the gas, looking at things. I was about to light a match but I didn't. I opened up the door and left. I walked around about an hour, and then I went home.
The defendant was convicted by a jury of assault with intent to rob while armed, 3 assault with intent to murder, 4 breaking and entering an occupied dwelling, 5 and first-degree criminal sexual conduct (two counts). 6
The defendant had been apprehended driving a vehicle stolen during a break-in of a home near Mrs. Green's, and, although the record is not free from doubt, it appears that he was charged and acquitted in three other cases, each of which involved a breaking and entering and a robbery, and two of which also involved criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for each of the assault convictions, ten to fifteen years for the breaking and entering conviction, and sixty- to one-hundred-twenty years for each of the criminal sexual conduct convictions.
The defendant appealed as of right. Over a dissent by Judge Connor, the Court of Appeals vacated the defendant's sentences for the criminal sexual conduct convictions and remanded the case to the trial court for resentencing because the sentence departed from the sentencing guidelines' recommendation:
[T]he 60- to 120-year sentences violate the proportionality requirement of Milbourn. Clearly, considering defendant's background and the nature of his crimes, a severe sentence is warranted in this case. However, the sentences imposed exceeded the guidelines' recommended range by forty years, and are three times the guidelines' recommendation. Under the circumstances, we conclude that this substantial departure violates the proportionality requirement of Milbourn. [201 Mich.App. at 385-386, 506 N.W.2d 888.]
I do not retreat from the view that in People v. Milbourn, 435 Mich. 630, 461 N.W.2d 1 (1990), the Court violated separation of powers and usurped the authority constitutionally confided by the people of this state in their Legislature, see Const.1963, art. 4, § 45, and by the Legislature in the trial courts, see M.C.L. § 769.1; M.S.A. § 28.1072.
More importantly, that this Court could seriously debate the justice of the sentence imposed in this case is proof of the ultimate dehumanization of the sentencing process initiated by the decision. Both the Court of Appeals decision and the dissenting opinion vividly evidence that elaborate rationalizations for lowering sentences distance the appellate judiciary from meaningful connection with reality and distort the concept of individualized justice. As Marie Green's tragedy is mediated through the processes of proportionality and guidelines' evaluation, the focus of the reviewing court shifts from the horror of her blood, feces, and burned flesh, to the image of an enfeebled and sympathetic defendant, incarcerated at great cost to the state. See 201 Mich.App. at 385, 506 N.W.2d 888.
The course we have chosen is wrong, but it is firmly entrenched. Therefore, I reluctantly look to Milbourn for resolution.
The defendant's sentence is not an abuse of discretion under any extant definition of the term. In People v. Milbourn, supra, this Court held that a trial court abuses its discretion when it imposes a sentence that is not proportional to the seriousness of the matter. The Court carefully noted, however, that the principle of proportionality must leave room "to operate" from the least to the most serious situations:
Because the Legislature in addressing criminal punishment in general has subscribed to the principle of proportionality and because the commission of a given crime by a given offender may also vary considerably in seriousness, we believe it reasonable to conclude that the Legislature, in setting a range of allowable punishments for a single felony, intended persons whose conduct is more harmful and who have more serious prior criminal records to receive greater punishment than those whose criminal behavior and prior record are less threatening to society. [435 Mich. at 651, 461 N.W.2d 1.]
Milbourn affirms that the maximum sentence decreed by the Legislature 7 may be lawfully imposed in cases falling within the most serious class of offenses. Proportionate sentences may thus be imposed throughout the statutory range:
We believe that judicial sentencing discretion should be exercised, within the legislatively prescribed range, according to the same principle of proportionality that guides the Legislature in its allocation of punishment over the full spectrum of criminal behavior. Thus, a judge helps to fulfill the overall legislative scheme of criminal punishment by taking care to assure that the sentences imposed across the discretionary range are proportionate to the seriousness of the matters that come before the court for sentencing. [Id.]
The archetype "abuse of discretion" is the imposition of the maximum possible sentence "in the face of compelling mitigating circumstances...." See id. at 653, 461 N.W.2d 1. It should follow that the archetype "no abuse of discretion" case is the imposition of a maximum sentence in the face of compelling aggravating factors.
The conduct involved in this case is the most egregious contemplated by the legislative scheme. It is as impossible to imagine that any legislator would consider this case ordinary as it is to conclude that "no reasonable sentencer" would have found the facts so aggravating as to be outside the...
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