Sentencing; Reasonableness & proportionality; Departure sentence; Consideration of a defendant’s plea deal & conduct beyond the sentencing offense; People v Coulter; The trial court’s justification for an upward departure; People v Dixon-Bey

The court held that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to provide an adequate rationale for the extent of its departure sentence. Defendant pled no contest to second-degree home invasion and domestic violence arising out of an incident involving his ex-girlfriend. The trial court departed from the minimum sentencing guidelines range and sentenced him to 10 to 15 years for the former, and to a concurrent jail sentence of 93 days for the latter. On appeal, the court rejected his argument that the trial court improperly considered his plea agreement and his conduct associated with separate cases. However, it agreed with him that the trial court did not sufficiently articulate its justifications for the departure. The trial court identified several “factors that were contemplated by the guidelines, but it did not explain why the guidelines did not adequately account for those factors.” In addition, it “failed to articulate why OV 4 and OV 10 did not adequately consider the victim’s psychological injury and defendant’s exploitation of his domestic relationship with the victim.” Finally, “despite providing some justifications for its departure, the trial court did not adequately justify the extent of the particular departure in this case, which resulted in the imposition of the maximum minimum sentence permissible under the established two-thirds rule.” Indeed, beyond stating it “believed that the departure was proportional to defendant and the circumstances of the case, the trial court did not engage in any meaningful analysis of why the departure sentence was more proportional than any other sentence would have” been. The court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing or further articulation of the justifications for the sentence imposed. It retained jurisdiction..