Sentencing; Scoring of OV 14; MCL 777.44(1)(a); Multiple offender situation; “Leader”; People v Dickinson; Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to raise a futile objection to the scoring; Presentence investigation report (PSIR)

The court held that the trial court did not err in scoring 10 points for OV 14 given the evidence “of a multiple-offender situation, i.e., a situation in which both defendant and” his codefendant (S) “violated the law together, and that between the two, defendant acted as the leader[.]” Further, defense counsel was not ineffective for failing to object to the scoring. Thus, the court affirmed defendant’s 120 to 240-month sentence for possessing meth with intent to deliver. It concluded the evidence supported that his “entire criminal transaction was a multiple-offender situation.” The trial court noted that on the day “officers searched defendant’s property, he lived with” S, his girlfriend. The trial court also read the description of the offense from the PSIR, “including that officers found large quantities of methamphetamine in the house where defendant and [S] cohabitated. Throughout the property, officers also located other drugs, drug paraphernalia, guns, and ammunition.” The trial court found that S, at a minimum, “‘helped store the drugs that were sold, knowing why the drugs were there, and again, admittedly possessing them prior to the sale.’ Accordingly, ‘[a]t a minimum, it was [S] who was part of the group who were violating the law, a multiple offender situation.’ This finding is supported by a preponderance of the evidence outlined in the PSIR and recited by the trial court.” As to the determination “that defendant acted as the leader in the multiple-offender situation,” given that he admitted “he had a large quantity of methamphetamine in his house and that he sold it, and [S] lived in that house and ‘struggle[d] with’” meth abuse, this finding did “not create a definite and firm conviction that the trial court made a mistake.” As to his ineffective assistance claim, the court concluded he failed to articulate “a reasonable probability that defense counsel’s objection would have changed the sentencing outcome because the trial court almost certainly would have overruled the objection.”