Opinion
No. 131645.
October 27, 2006.
Appeal from the Court of Appeals No. 268740.
Leave to Appeal Denied October 27, 2006.
I respectfully dissent from this Court's order denying leave to appeal. Defendant pleaded guilty to three counts of armed robbery and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The trial court sentenced defendant to five to 20 years for the armed robbery convictions, a consecutive two-year sentence for one of the felony-firearm convictions, and a consecutive five-year sentence for the other felony-firearm conviction. However, the trial court subsequently granted defendant's motion to amend the judgment of sentence and reduced the five-year sentence for felony-firearm to a two-year sentence, to run consecutively to the armed robbery sentences but concurrently with the other two-year sentence for felony-firearm. The Court of Appeals denied the prosecutor's application for leave to appeal.
MCL 750.227b(1) states, "Upon a second conviction under this section [for felony-firearm], the person shall be imprisoned for 5 years." In People v Sawyer, 410 Mich 531, 536 (1981), this Court held that "the Legislature intended that a five-year term of imprisonment for a second [felony-firearm] conviction should only be imposed when the second offense is subsequent to the first conviction." The prosecutor argues that Sawyer should be overruled.
Here, this was defendant's second conviction of felony-firearm and, thus, it would seem that he should be imprisoned for five years according to the straightforward language of the statute. Contrary to the holding in Sawyer, MCL 750.227b(1) does not say that a five-year sentence is only appropriate where the second conviction arises from an offense committed after the imposition of the sentence for the first conviction. Therefore, I would grant the prosecutor's application for leave to appeal to reconsider Sawyer.
CORRIGAN, J. I join the statement of Justice MARKMAN.