People v. Comer
Docket No. 152713
Trial Lawyers’ Bottom Line: Trial court cannot correct an invalid sentence sua sponte after judgment; instead, a party must move for resentencing.
In 2011, Comer pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct. Under MCL 750.520n and People v Brantley, 296 Mich App 546 (2012), the trial judge should have imposed lifetime monitoring on the defendant, but the judge failed to do so. Even after a remand for resentencing due to incorrect scoring of offense variables, the trial court still did not impose lifetime monitoring.
The Michigan Department of Corrections wrote a letter to the trial court saying that the defendant’s sentence should have included lifetime monitoring; but the prosecution never moved for resentencing. The trial court then imposed life monitoring sua sponte. After a remand from the Michigan Supreme Court for consideration as on leave granted, the Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that “the trial court was empowered to correct defendant’s invalid sentence without time limitation.” The Supreme Court granted leave to appeal.
Justice Viviano wrote the opinion, which Chief Justice Markman and Justices McCormack, Bernstein, and Larsen joined. First, the Court agreed that Comer was subject to lifetime monitoring under MCL 750.520n because he pled guilty to CSC-1 and did not receive a sentence of life without parole. Next, the Court turned to whether the trial court could amend the sentence sua sponte.
The Court said no. The Court first noted that MCR 6.435(A) permits a court to correct a clerical mistake on its own initiative at any time, including after a judgment has entered. The Court said this mistake, however, constituted a substantive mistake, not a clerical one. And MCR 6.435(B) allows a court to correct substantive mistakes on its own initiative “provided it has not yet entered judgment in the case.” Thus, the Court held, “the court’s ability to correct substantive mistakes under MCR 6.435(B) ends upon the entry of the judgment.”
The Court then looked at MCR 6.429, which provides the procedural process by which a party can move to correct an invalid sentence. Among the processes enumerated, the statute does not say that a court can correct an invalid sentence sua sponte. The Court said that—in light of both this silence and 6.435’s permission to courts to correct a sentence any time before judgment is entered—the Court would have expected the drafters to speak more clearly if a court were allowed to correct an invalid sentence sua sponte after judgment is entered. The Court thus overruled the Court of Appeals decision in People v. Harris, 224 Mich App 597 (1997) to the extent that it is inconsistent with its opinion. As a result, the Court held that the Court of Appeals erred by affirming the lower court’s modification of the sentence and remanded the case to the trial court to reinstate the original sentence—without lifetime monitoring.
Justice Zahra, joined by Justice Wilder, concurred in part and dissented in part. He agreed that the sentence was invalid and that the trial court lacked authority to correct the invalid sentence. He disagreed with the majority, however, as to the remedy of reinstating the invalid sentence. Justice Zahra agreed that the trial court could not adjust the sentence sua sponte, but that the Supreme Court could “at any time . . . enter any judgment or order that ought to have been entered.”
Full opinion here.