Sentencing; Reliance on acquitted conduct; People v Beck

In an order in lieu of granting leave to appeal, the court reversed Part II(C) of the Court of Appeals judgment (see eJournal # 81452 in the 5/1/24 edition) and remanded the case to the trial court for resentencing. It held that the “trial court erred when it relied on its own determination that defendant possessed an intent to distribute meth[] in imposing [his] sentence for his conviction of simple possession, and the Court of Appeals erroneously affirmed that decision.” While noting that it was sentencing him “only on simple possession, the trial court also explained at sentencing that it believed that defendant had expressed the intent to deliver the substance, despite the jury’s rejection of that charge. In fact, after explaining details of the evidence presented against defendant at trial, the trial court noted that ‘the fact that there’s also a scale in the safe says volumes about what [the] baggies were going to be used for, and that shows an intent to distribute.’ Thus, under the totality of the circumstances,” the court found “that the trial court relied on the intent element, the only element differentiating the charge that the jury rejected—possession with intent to deliver—from the one that the jury found defendant guilty of completing beyond a reasonable doubt—simple possession. ‘Because the sentencing court punished the defendant more severely on the basis of the judge’s finding by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant committed’ possession with intent to deliver, ‘of which the jury had acquitted him, it violated the defendant’s due-process protections.’” The court concluded this “reliance violated defendant’s due-process rights, because it constituted a finding at sentencing of an essential element to a charge that the jury specifically determined was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”