Sentencing of juvenile & 18-year-old offenders; Proportionality; Miller v Alabama; People v Parks; People v Eads; People v Echols; Redaction of testimony; Prosecutorial misconduct; Comparisons to Nazis & Lebanese terrorists; Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to object to the use of redacted testimony & to the alleged prosecutorial misconduct; Life without parole (LWOP)

The court found “no error warranting reversal of defendant’s convictions.” But it concluded that the recent evolution of the law as to “juvenile and 18-year-old offenders has rendered defendant’s term-of-years sentences of 65 to 100 years’ imprisonment for his second-degree murder and AWIM convictions invalid under the principle of proportionality because the sentencing court failed to consider defendant’s youth and its attendant characteristics as mitigating factors.” Thus, it affirmed in part and reversed in part the trial court order denying his motion for relief from judgment, vacated his sentences for second-degree murder and AWIM, and remanded for resentencing. Defendant’s minimum sentence range under the sentencing guidelines was 10 years to life for the second-degree murder convictions. The court concluded that it was “clear from the record that the trial court did not consider the mitigating factors of defendant’s youth during sentencing. In explaining its concurrent sentences of 65 to 100 years’ imprisonment, the trial court focused on primarily on the nature of the offense, noting that it was ‘savage,’ ‘inhumane,’ and ‘disgusting.’ The trial court remarked that it was hard ‘to imagine the emptiness of soul that must occupy [defendant’s] spirit,’ and expressed that it was ‘shocked and dismayed and disgusted by [defendant’s] behavior.’ But the trial court did not consider this behavior in light of the mitigating factors of youth announced in Miller and its progeny.” The court found that similar “to the sentences at issue in Eads and Echols, defendant’s term-of-years sentences are more severe than generally authorized for offenders who were juveniles or between 18 and 20 years old when they committed first-degree murder. The default sentence for such offenders is now a minimum term of 25 to 40 years’ imprisonment with a maximum of at least 60 years’ imprisonment if the court decides not to sentence the defendant to LWOP.” His minimum “sentence of 65 years for second-degree murder exceeds the suggested maximum sentence for an offender who was 18 years old when he committed first-degree murder. Although the defendant in Eads was a juvenile when he committed second-degree murder, this Court’s reasoning and conclusion that the defendant’s 50-to-75-year sentence violated the principle of proportionality is persuasive here when viewed alongside the Parks Court’s recognition that juvenile and 18-year-old offenders are not meaningfully distinguishable for sentencing purposes.” Thus, the court found that he “was entitled to be sentenced in a manner that duly accounted for the individualized circumstances of defendant and the offenses, which included his ‘youth and its attendant characteristics as potentially mitigating factors.’”