Ruling 4-2, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a lengthy opinion yesterday upholding the procedures of its new juvenile sentencing statute. The majority opinion in Michigan v. Skinner, No. 152448 (Mich. June 20, 2018) (available here), gets started this way:
At issue here is whether MCL 769.25 violates the Sixth Amendment because it allows the decision whether to impose a sentence of life without parole to be made by a judge, rather than by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. We hold that MCL 769.25 does not violate the Sixth Amendment because neither the statute nor the Eighth Amendment requires a judge to find any particular fact before imposing life without parole; instead, life without parole is authorized by the jury’s verdict alone. Therefore, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals in Skinner and affirm the part of Hyatt that held that “[a] judge, not a jury, must determine whether to impose a life-without-parole sentence or a term-of-years sentence under MCL 769.25.” People v Hyatt, 316 Mich App 368, 415; 891 NW2d 549 (2016). However, we reverse the part of Hyatt that adopted a heightened standard of review for life-without-parole sentences imposed under MCL 769.25 and that remanded this case to the trial court for it to “decide whether defendant Hyatt is the truly rare juvenile mentioned in [Miller v Alabama, 567 US 460; 132 S Ct 2455; 183 L Ed 2d 407 (2012)] who is incorrigible and incapable of reform.” Hyatt, 316 Mich App at 429. No such explicit finding is required. Finally, we remand both of these cases to the Court of Appeals for it to review defendants’ sentences under the traditional abuse-of-discretion standard of review.
The dissenting opinion gets started this way:
There is much in the majority opinion with which I agree. For example, I agree that if MCL 769.25 can reasonably be construed in a constitutional manner, we should so construe it. And I generally agree with the majority’s discussion of the applicable legal principles. But I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that there are two reasonable ways of interpreting MCL 769.25, one of which is constitutional. Reading the statute as “murder-plus” would violate the Sixth Amendment under Apprendi v New Jersey, 530 US 466; 120 S Ct 2348; 147 L Ed 2d 435 (2000), and its progeny. And I disagree with the majority that reading the statute as “murder-minus” cures all its constitutional deficiencies. In my view, reading the statute as murder-minus renders it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in Miller v Alabama, 567 US 460; 132 S Ct 2455; 183 L Ed 2d 407 (2012), and Montgomery v Louisiana, 577 US ___; 136 S Ct 718; 193 L Ed 2d 599 (2016). Read either way, MCL 769.25 suffers from a constitutional deficiency.
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