People v. Stokes

• Decision Date: 20 August 2020
• Docket Number: No. 348472,No. 348471,348471,348472
• Parties: PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CHRISTOPHER WAYNE STOKES, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CHRISTOPHER WAYNE STOKES, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 348471

No. 348472

STATE OF MICHIGAN COURT OF APPEALS

August 20, 2020

If this opinion indicates that it is "FOR PUBLICATION," it is subject to revision until final publication in the Michigan Appeals Reports.

FOR PUBLICATION

Wayne Circuit Court

LC Nos. 13-007518-01-FC; 13-007545-01-FC

Advance Sheets Version

Before: REDFORD, P.J., and METER and O'BRIEN, JJ.

REDFORD, P.J.

In Docket No. 348471, a jury convicted defendant, Christopher Wayne Stokes, of carjacking, MCL 750.529a(1), and armed robbery, MCL 750.529, on February 11, 2014. On March 20, 2014, the trial court sentenced defendant as a second-offense habitual offender, MCL 769.10, to concurrent terms of 18 to 30 years' imprisonment for each conviction. Defendant appealed his convictions and sentences. People v Stokes, 312 Mich App 181; 877 NW2d 752 (2015), vacated in part 501 Mich 918 (2017). This Court affirmed his convictions but remanded and ordered the trial court to follow the Crosby¹ procedure. On remand, the trial court resentenced defendant to 18 to 30 years' imprisonment for each conviction. Defendant now appeals as of right. We affirm.

In Docket No. 348472, a jury convicted defendant on October 20, 2014, of carjacking and armed robbery. The trial court sentenced defendant on November 17, 2014, as a second-offense habitual offender to concurrent terms of 20 to 30 years' imprisonment for each conviction. Defendant appealed his convictions and sentences. People v Stokes, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued March 15, 2016 (Docket No. 325197). This Court remanded and ordered the trial court to follow the Crosby procedure, and on remand the trial court resentenced defendant to concurrent terms of 20 to 30 years' imprisonment for each conviction. Defendant now appeals as of right. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

The trial court granted defendant resentencing in both cases and held a combined resentencing hearing on March 15, 2019. The trial court noted that, in addition to listening to counsel and defendant at the hearing, it had reviewed the new presentence investigation reports (PSIRs) and the opinions from this Court. Finding no error in its previous assessment of the factors under the advisory sentencing guidelines, and not being persuaded by defense counsel that changes were warranted to defendant's previous sentences, the trial court resentenced defendant to the same sentences it had imposed at defendant's original sentencing hearings.

II. ANALYSIS

In both appeals, defendant argues that he is entitled to resentencing on the ground that the trial court violated his due-process rights by considering acquitted conduct in determining his sentences. We disagree.

Defendant failed to preserve this issue in the trial court. "This Court reviews unpreserved issues alleging constitutional error for plain error affecting a defendant's substantial rights." People v Heft, 299 Mich App 69, 78; 829 NW2d 266 (2012). "To avoid forfeiture under the plain error rule, three requirements must be met: 1) error must have occurred, 2) the error was plain, i.e., clear or obvious, 3) and the plain error affected substantial rights." People v Carines, 460 Mich 750, 763; 597 NW2d 130 (1999). "The third requirement generally requires a showing of prejudice, i.e., that the error affected the outcome of the lower court proceedings." Id. "Reversal is warranted only when the plain, forfeited error resulted in the conviction of an actually innocent defendant or when an error seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings independent of the defendant's innocence." Id. at 763 (quotation marks and citation omitted).

In People v Beck, 504 Mich 605, 629; 939 NW2d 213 (2019), our Supreme Court held "that due process bars sentencing courts from finding by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant engaged in conduct of which he was acquitted." In other words, "Once acquitted of a given crime, it violates due process to sentence the defendant as if he committed that very same crime." Id. at 609. Our Supreme Court remanded for resentencing in Beck "[b]ecause the trial court in [that] case relied at least in part on acquitted conduct when imposing sentence for the defendant's conviction . . . ." Id. at 609-610.

In People v Roberts (On Remand), 331 Mich App 680; 954 NW2d 221 (2020), this Court explained the scope of application of the principle articulated in Beck. In Roberts, the defendant and his friend were in a nightclub when someone shot a patron, and they and other patrons fled outside. Id. at 683. Outside the nightclub, the defendant passed a gun to his friend as they advanced toward a group of people. Id. at 684. The defendant's friend fired shots and apparently passed the gun back to the defendant before the two of them fled the scene. Id. The police pursued them, and an officer saw the defendant dispose of the gun which the police later retrieved. Id. The jury convicted the defendant of being a felon in possession of a firearm and of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, but acquitted him of assault with intent to murder under an aiding and abetting theory. Id. at 683. The sentencing court considered the background facts of the incident when scoring the offense variables under the advisory sentencing guidelines andimposed an upward departure sentence. Id. at 685-686. The defendant argued on appeal that the sentencing court violated the principle articulated in Beck by considering facts unrelated to the offenses of which the jury convicted him. See id. at 688-692. This Court disagreed and explained:

It has long been understood that failure to persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is not conclusive as to proofs under the less-stringent preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. Stone v United States, 167 US 178, 188-189; 17 S Ct 778; 42 L Ed 127 (1897); Martucci v Detroit Comm'r of Police, 322 Mich 270, 273-274; 33 NW2d 789 (1948). Nevertheless, our Supreme Court has recently taught us that sentencing courts may not consider any "acquitted conduct" in crafting their sentences, although they remain free to consider "uncharged conduct." Beck, 504 Mich at 626-627. "Acquitted conduct" means any "conduct . . . underlying charges of which [the defendant] had been acquitted." United States v Watts, 519 US 148, 153-154; 117 S Ct 633; 136 L Ed 2d 554 (1997), cited by Beck, 504 Mich at 609 n 1. We infer from this broad definition that under Beck, a sentencing court must consider a defendant as having undertaken no act or omission that a jury could have relied upon in finding that the essential elements of any acquitted offense were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, as we will discuss in more detail below, Beck expressly permits trial courts to consider uncharged conduct and any other circumstances or context surrounding the defendant or the sentencing offense. [Id. at 688.]

* * *

The trial court explicitly declined to hold defendant responsible for "what happened in the night club," implicitly meaning the trial court did not consider any victims placed in danger by the shooting of which defendant was acquitted. Nevertheless, we agree with the trial court that a substantial and qualitative difference exists between possessing contraband in one's own home and unlawfully possessing and passing around a concealed firearm in a crowded bar during a shooting. Nothing in Beck precludes a sentencing court from generally considering the time, place, and manner in which an offense is committed. We conclude that Beck does not exclude from consideration the contextual fact that the acquitted conduct was committed by someone, so long as that conduct is not actually attributed to the defendant. Irrespective of whether defendant participated in the shooting, the context within which he committed the offense of felon-in-possession intrinsically placed people in grave danger. We therefore reiterate our previous conclusion that the trial court was justified in finding that defendant's actions placed at least 10 victims in danger of physical injury or death. The trial court therefore did not err in assigning 25 points under OV 9. [Id. at 689-690.]

This Court explained further:

As discussed, the definition of "acquitted conduct" covers a broad range of conduct. Nevertheless, we do not understand Beck to preclude all consideration of the entire res gestae of an acquitted offense. . . . We conclude that even under Beck, a sentencing court may consider, for example, the fact that a felon on probationbringing a concealed gun into a crowded nightclub demonstrates—at a minimum—an appallingly reckless disregard for the predictable outcome. Defendant may not be deemed to have provided a weapon for the purpose of shooting it into a crowd, nor can defendant be deemed to have "allowed" the shooting. Nevertheless, defendant can certainly be deemed to have knowingly acted in a manner that drastically increased the likelihood that such a tragedy, whether or not this particular tragedy, would occur. As discussed above, the trial court appropriately observed that it is "one thing" to illegally possess a gun in one's own home, but quite another to introduce an illegally possessed and concealed gun into an environment that was already chaotic and unstable. [Id. at 691-692.]

This case significantly differs from Beck and Roberts; nevertheless, defendant argues that the trial court violated the principle articulated in Beck because the court reviewed the PSIRs for each case, and the PSIRs contained information about defendant's acquitted conduct. Defendant further argues that "[t]he practice of including information on acquitted charges in the presentence report should stop, as it violates [d]ue [p]rocess for a sentencing judge to consider it." We d...