Background
Fourteen-year-old IJ and her friend EH were taken by Uber to a Detroit house after IJ had run away from home. There, Eric Alfonso Love asked the girls to engage in prostitution. They declined, but Love continued pressing them to perform sex acts for money and refused to let them use his phone to arrange transportation home.
IJ testified that she felt she had no choice but to have intercourse with Love’s codefendant so that she and EH could obtain money to leave. The codefendant paid Love, who gave IJ $30 and later threatened to shoot the girls after IJ complained about the amount. A jury convicted Love of engaging a minor for commercial sexual activity but acquitted him of three other charges. The trial court imposed a sentence of 6 to 20 years, exceeding the guidelines minimum range of 3 to 5 years.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. Love waived his challenges to the jury instructions because defense counsel expressly stated that he had no objection to the instructions at trial. The court therefore declined to review his arguments concerning statutory definitions, unanimity, corroboration, and victim resistance.
The evidence was sufficient for a rational juror to find that Love recruited, enticed, transported, or provided IJ for commercial sexual activity with the required intent. His payment for the Uber, repeated offers of money for sex, refusal to let the girls call for a ride, receipt of payment from the codefendant, and payment to IJ supported the verdict. The court nevertheless vacated the sentence because the trial court gave no explanation for its upward departure, preventing meaningful review of the departure’s reasonableness and proportionality. It remanded for resentencing.
Key Takeaways
- Expressly approving jury instructions waives appellate claims of instructional error.
- A conviction under MCL 750.462e(a) does not require proof that the minor was unwilling to engage in the commercial sexual activity.
- A trial court abuses its discretion when it imposes an upward departure sentence without explaining why the sentence and the extent of the departure are proportionate.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the range of circumstantial evidence that can establish recruiting, enticing, transporting, or providing a minor for commercial sexual activity under Michigan law. It also underscores that defense counsel’s affirmative approval of jury instructions extinguishes later challenges to those instructions.
For sentencing courts, the opinion reinforces that merely selecting a sentence above the advisory guidelines is insufficient. The court must state on the record why the departure sentence is more proportionate than a guidelines sentence and justify the extent of the departure.