Sentencing; Waiver right to the remainder of a Miller hearing; Miller v Alabama; MCL 769.25(6) & (7); Life without parole (LWOP)

The court concluded that defendant’s waiver of MCL 769.25(6) and (7)’s “requirements extinguished any error, and he cannot now ‘seek appellate review of a claimed deprivation of those rights.’” And even if it were to treat his “claim ‘as merely forfeited rather than affirmatively waived,’” it would still find no reversible error. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 1983 for crimes he committed when he was 16 years old. The prosecution moved to resentence him to LWOP “under MCL 769.25(2), and in accordance with MCL 769.25(6), the trial court held a hearing on” that motion. At the start of the second day of the “hearing, before defendant presented his evidence, [he] knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to [] proceed with the remainder of the hearing.” The trial court resentenced him to LWOP. Defendant argued that it abused its discretion when it resentenced him “without making the required findings.” The court noted that “before the trial court had an opportunity to make the required findings, [he] unequivocally waived his right to the remainder of the hearing. Additionally, the requirements of MCL 769.25(6) and (7) generally establish the process that courts are to follow when deciding whether to sentence a juvenile offender to” LWOP. But here, he “affirmed that a consequence of his waiver was that he would be resentenced to [LWOP], and he further affirmed that he was ‘in agreement with that.’” Taken as a whole, the facts suggested that he “waived the requirements of MCL 769.25(6) and (7).” The court noted that no “published decision in this state has considered whether a defendant can waive” these protections, “and if so, how.” Resolution of whether he “could and validly did waive” these requirements was “potentially dispositive—if defendant can and did waive the requirements of MCL 769.25(6) and (7), then [his] appeal based on the trial court’s failure to fulfill” them could not proceed. He did “not address whether a waiver of the ‘procedural mechanisms’ under MCL 769.25 is proper in the first instance, jumping only to the question: what are the responsibilities of a sentencing court following a valid waiver of a Miller hearing? As a result, any argument about whether a defendant could not waive the requirements of MCL 769.25(6) and (7) is saved for another day.” This made resolving the appeal “straightforward. At his Miller hearing, defendant knowingly, voluntarily, and unequivocally waived his right to the remainder of the Miller hearing and agreed that the likely consequence of his decision was that he would be resentenced to” LWOP. By so doing, he “effectively waived the requirements of MCL 769.25(6) and (7).” And because he “was no longer opposing the prosecution’s motion to resentence him to” LWOP, the trial court so sentenced him. He abandoned any claim “that he could not or did not validly waive his rights under those subsections because he failed to adequately brief the issue.”