Sentencing; Proportionality; MCL 769.34(10); People v Posey; Other acts evidence; MCL 768.27a(1); Waiver; Challenge to the constitutionality of MCL 768.27a; People v Watkins

The court held that defendant’s 75-year minimum sentences for his CSC I convictions were not disproportionate. It also concluded he waived his challenge to the admission of other acts evidence, and his challenge to the constitutionality of MCL 768.27a failed in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Watkins. Thus, the court affirmed his convictions and his sentences. The trial court sentenced him within his minimum guidelines range of 270 to 900 months. He was correct that, under Posey, the court was “no longer required, under MCL 769.34(10), to affirm his in-guidelines sentence, and that his sentence must be reviewed for proportionality.” But it rejected his claim that his sentences were disproportionate and unreasonable. The victim in this case was 14 years old. The trial court at sentencing “reflected on the fact defendant served 15 years in prison in 1997 for sexual assault against a special-needs 13-year-old girl. [It] emphasized that one of the goals of defendant’s sentence was to ‘make sure that [defendant] will never be in a position where he can offend a child again because this is not the first time.’” The court concluded the “trial court balanced the need to protect children against the unlikely potential rehabilitation of defendant.” As a result, it held that “the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it weighed defendant’s rehabilitative potential against the need to protect children from defendant’s likelihood to reoffend.” As to his arguments regarding the other acts evidence admitted at trial, he waived his challenge to its admission “by defense counsel expressly indicating that he had no objection.” And his constitutional challenge failed pursuant to Watkins, in which the Supreme Court “clearly and unambiguously rejected defendant’s constitutional argument.”