Summaries of Michigan Supreme Court DecisionsSENTENCING AND PUNISHMENT -- Guidelines -- Reasons for Departure -- Upward Departure Reversed___ Mich ___ (#135395, 3-19-08) MARTHA BEACH SOLTIS In lieu of granting leave to appeal, vacated sentence and remanded for resentencing. The trial court's assumption that defendant would be required to serve additional prison time on his parole sentence was not objective and verifiable (and was in fact erroneous), and the possibility of a current prisoner or parolee serving sentence in the county jail does not relate to the seriousness of the offense and was not a compelling reason to deny defendant an intermediate sanction to which he is entitled by statute. View fulltext of this opinion through the Michigan Courts Web site.
EVIDENCE—Hearsay--Dying Declaration
#132887 December 27, 2007 IN PRO PER Affirmed defendant's convictions of murder. Case below: unpublished opinion (#263436, November 16, 2006). A child may have the capacity to be conscious of his own impending death for purposes of the dying declaration exception to the hearsay rule, MRE 804(b)(2). The four-year-old victim's statement to his mother, “Mom, I can't, I'm dead,” when considered along with his severe injuries, indicated his belief that his death was imminent, making his statement implicating defendant (“Mom's wife”) as his assailant admissible. A declarant's age alone does not preclude the admission of a dying declaration. View fulltext of this opinion through the Michigan Courts Web site.
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