Background
Malik Chrishard Lewis fled from police responding to a domestic dispute near the St. Clair River. During the pursuit, Lewis and Officer Caleb Paul grappled and fell into the water, where Lewis allegedly pushed Paul underwater for approximately eight seconds. Lewis then continued fleeing and resisted Officers William Hoppe and Christian Matich before they handcuffed him.
Lewis pleaded no contest to second-offense domestic violence, assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer causing serious impairment (APO-CSI), and common-law obstruction of justice. The prosecution dismissed other charges, including separate resisting-and-obstructing counts involving the officers. At sentencing, the trial court assessed 10 points under Offense Variable 12 for two contemporaneous felonious acts based on Lewis’s conduct toward Hoppe and Matich, producing a sentence of 48 to 270 months for APO-CSI.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals held that the trial court improperly assessed 10 points under OV 12. The factual basis for Lewis’s obstruction conviction expressly relied on his continued flight and resistance to Hoppe and the other officers. His acts involving Hoppe and Matich therefore could not also be treated as separate contemporaneous felonious acts because they were used to establish the obstruction offense and resulted in a separate conviction.
The parties’ intentions during plea negotiations did not change that conclusion. The parties had not stipulated to a particular guidelines score, and their understanding of the plea was not evidence of distinct criminal acts. Removing the 10 points lowered Lewis’s OV level for APO-CSI and changed the applicable guidelines range, requiring resentencing. The court vacated the APO-CSI sentence, affirmed the obstruction sentence, and remanded for resentencing and correction of the sentencing information reports for both convictions.
Key Takeaways
- OV 12 concerns distinct underlying criminal acts, not the number of offenses prosecutors could charge from the same conduct.
- Conduct used to establish an element or factual basis of a sentencing offense cannot also be scored as a separate contemporaneous felonious act.
- A scoring error requires resentencing when correcting it changes the applicable guidelines range, while inaccurate sentencing records must still be corrected even when another sentence remains unaffected.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that Michigan sentencing courts must examine the actual conduct supporting each conviction rather than rely on dismissed charge labels or the parties’ expectations during plea negotiations. Prosecutors cannot use conduct incorporated into one conviction to increase the guidelines score for another as though it were unconnected criminal activity.
It also underscores the practical importance of accurate sentencing information reports, which follow defendants into the corrections system and must be corrected even when an error does not independently justify resentencing on every conviction.