The trial court’s authority to enter an amended judgment of sentence (JOS); Whether omission of the maximum imposed sentence on a JOS was a clerical or a substantive mistake under MCR 6.435; People v Comer; Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor (SCRAM)

Holding that the omission of defendant’s maximum imposed sentence on his prior JOS was a clerical mistake, the court affirmed the trial court’s entry of an amended JOS that reflected his maximum sentence was 10 years but left the other provisions of the prior JOS unchanged. He pled nolo contendere to AWIGBH in 2019 and was sentenced to probation in addition to a term of incarceration. His probation conditions included refraining from using alcohol and wearing a SCRAM. He later pled guilty, as part of a Cobbs agreement for a year and a day sentence, to violating his probation by tampering with his SCRAM. On 3/27/20, he was sentenced to a minimum of 366 days in prison with 187 days’ jail credit. But the JOS failed to include an entry for his maximum sentence. In 6/20, the trial court entered the amended JOS to correct this omission. He argued that it lacked the authority to do so. The issue was whether the omission of his maximum imposed sentence on the 3/27/20 JOS “was a clerical or a substantive mistake under MCR 6.435.” The court noted that, unlike “in Comer where the trial court twice failed to check the box for lifetime monitoring, here, defendant had been informed of his maximum sentence when the trial court made clear its understanding that it would impose both a minimum and a maximum sentence during the sentencing hearing. Because the trial court made clear that it understood that defendant would be incarcerated for longer than the minimum sentence reached in the Cobbs agreement, it could never have been” its intent to sentence him only to 366 days “with no maximum term. Thus, unlike in Comer, the trial court understood and conveyed to defendant the maximum penalty and its failure to place the maximum sentence on the sentence information is not a substantive misunderstanding of law, but precisely the sort of omission that MCR 6.435(A) contemplates.” The court added that nothing in “MCR 6.435(A) requires the trial court to provide defendant with a hearing before correcting a clerical mistake, and correcting such a mistake without providing a hearing does not violate due process.”