ADRIAN – A man convicted by a Lenawee County Circuit Court jury in 2018 of having sex acts with the son and daughter of his on-and-off girlfriend and wife should have his minimum sentence reduced again, a Michigan panel rules Court of Appeals. has ordered.
David Alan Stevens’ minimum sentence for a conviction of first-degree criminal sexual conduct should be set between six years and nine months and 11 years and three months, Judges Mark J. Cavanagh, Kathleen Jansen and Allie Greenleaf Maldonado said in their opinion. The change is a result of a prior conviction in Ohio being improperly used as a basis for a habitual offender enhancement.
“The record does not provide a sufficient basis to conclude that the conduct that led to defendant’s conviction in Ohio would have been a crime in Michigan, and therefore the trial court erred in convicting defendant as a habitual offender” , according to the advice.
This will be the second time that 48-year-old Stevens has been convicted again. The new sentence in this case will be approximately one third of the original minimum sentence.
Stevens, 48, is currently serving 14 to 75 years in prison after being resentenced in 2022.
Criminal sexual conduct in the first degree carries a maximum prison sentence of life in prison.
Stevens was convicted in 2018 after a trial in Lenawee County Circuit Court of one count of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree and two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the third degree. Judge Anna Marie Anzalone sentenced him to 21 years and 10 months to 75 years in prison.
The first time he was resentenced, the Court of Appeals ruled that Stevens’ attorney failed to object to Anzalone’s erroneous jury instructions and that he failed to request an instruction that would would limit what the jury should consider testimony about other actions taken during the trial. process. The Court of Appeals threw out the two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and ordered that he be resentenced because of the way the vacated charges were factored into the minimum sentence score on the first-degree charge, and because of a error in calculating minimum sentence. . Anzalone’s new sentence was 14 to 75 years in prison.
In the final appeal, another three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals – Judges Mark J. Cavanagh, Kathleen Jansen and Allie Greenleaf Maldonado – agreed with Stevens’ argument that he was wrongly convicted as a habitual offender. Stevens had previously been convicted in Ohio of possessing criminal tools and failing to support family members. For a prior conviction in another state to be used as a habitual offender enhancement, the crime must have been something that would have been a crime or an attempt to commit a crime in Michigan, the opinion said.
Anzalone had determined that the Michigan criminal instrument conviction would not have been a crime. The failure to support charge is a fifth-degree felony in Ohio, but the appeals judges said it doesn’t matter how another state classifies its offenses.
“Finding that Defendant is guilty of a fifth-degree felony in Ohio does not alter the fact that this would have been a felony in Michigan,” the opinion said.
Under Michigan law regarding nonpayment of child support, the opinion states, a person must violate a court order to make payments to be convicted of a crime.
“The critical difference between these crimes is that the Ohio crime does not necessarily require failure to provide support to violate a court order, while the Michigan crime does,” the opinion states. “Because the crime can be committed in Ohio without a support order in place, it is possible that the same conduct would be a crime in Ohio but not in Michigan. Therefore, knowing that the suspect has been found guilty of this crime is not, sufficient in itself to conclude that the underlying conduct would have been a crime in Michigan Therefore, convicting the defendant as a habitual offender with a violation of this Ohio statute serving as a predicate offense requires the court to have some knowledge of the. underlying facts.
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There was no information in the sex abuse case file about the underlying facts in Stevens’ non-support conviction, the appeals court said.
“There is nothing in the record to indicate that the defendant has been ordered to pay such costs, indicating that the conviction may not have arisen from the violation of a pre-existing support order,” the opinion said. “Because we do not know whether the defendant’s failure to support a dependent conviction was committed in violation of a court order, it necessarily follows that we do not know whether the conduct giving rise to the conviction would constitute a crime in Ohio been in Michigan.”
The prosecutor had time to present evidence that Stevens violated a court order for support, the opinion said.
“Indeed, the initial hearing on the criminal case was postponed specifically to allow the prosecutor to adequately address whether the defendant’s conviction in Ohio for possession of criminal tools would be a crime in Michigan,” the opinion said. “The first hearing was postponed in July and the prosecutor had until October to gather the information necessary to meet his burden. During that period, it decided to amend the information to include the non-supportive conviction as a starting point for habitual offender status, but failed to budge each evidence relating to the underlying facts of the non-aid conviction.”
Giving the prosecutor a second chance to meet his burden of proof would be contrary to the principles of fairness and would create double jeopardy, because the prosecutor’s failure to present sufficient evidence of an equivalent prior conviction is analogous to overturning a conviction based on insufficient evidence’. ”, was the advice.
The appeals panel rejected Stevens’ arguments in the final appeal that his minimum sentencing guidelines were not correctly calculated.
— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.
This article originally appeared in The Daily Telegram: Michigan Court of Appeals orders new sentence in sex abuse case
