Safe & Just Michigan

From the February 2025 Criminal Defense Newsletter
New standing committees

The start of 2025 brought the start of the 103rd session of the Michigan Legislature, and one of the first orders of business was selecting new standing committees in the House. Of particular interest to criminal legal reform advocates are the committees that consider legislation impacting courtrooms, prisons, re-entry services, expungements, and related topics. Those committee assignments have now been announced, and the very first meetings have gotten underway.

Here are the committees we believe will be of the greatest importance to our advocate community in the coming two years:

House judiciary committee

• Chair: Rep. Sarah Lightner (R-Springport)
• Majority Vice Chair: Rep. Brian BeGole (R-Antrim Township)
• Minority Vice Chair: Rep. Tyrone Carter (D-Detroit)
• Members: Reps. Douglas Wozniak (R-Shelby Township), Mike Harris 
(R-Waterford), Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Township), Gina Johnsen (R-Lake Odessa), 
Bill Schuette (R-Midland), Kara Hope (D-Holt), Kelly Breen (D-Novi), 
Helena Scott (D-Detroit)

House appropriations corrections and judiciary appropriations subcommittee

• Chair: Rep. Bradley Slagh (R-Zeeland)
• Majority Vice Chair: Rep. Greg Markkanen (R-Hancock)
• Minority Vice Chair: Rep. Amos O'Neal (D-Saginaw)
• Members: Reps. Timothy Beson (R-Bay City), Cam Cavitt (R-Cheboygan)

Senate civil rights, judiciary and public safety committee

• Chair: Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit)
• Majority Vice Chair: Sue Shink (D-Northfield Township) 
• Minority Vice Chair: Jim Runestad (R-White Lake)
• Members: Sens. Paul Wojno (D-Warren), Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), Sylvia A. Santana 
(D-Detroit), Ruth A. Johnson (R-Holly)

Senate appropriations corrections and judiciary subcommittee

• Chair: Sue Shink (D-Northfield Township) 
• Majority Vice Chair: Sylvia A. Santana (D-Detroit)
• Minority Vice Chair: Rick Outman (R-Six Lakes)
• Member: Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor)

It’s time to take a look at habitual sentencing

With Republicans taking control of the state House, it’s time to reassess what opportunities lay ahead of us in the coming years and determine where we can find success. New House leadership has signaled that they aren’t interested in bringing issues such as Good Time or Bail Reform up for a vote, but they have left the door open to taking a look at sentencing policies — one of the things that the newly authorized Sentencing Commission has been tasked to investigate.

With that in mind, Safe & Just Michigan believes it’s time to turn attention to the way Michigan uses habitual sentencing status. Habitual sentencing is an optional enhancement a prosecutor can add to a charge to lengthen a statutory maximum sentence by 25 percent, 50 percent or 100 percent, depending on how many prior convictions a person has.

There are aspects of this law that are troubling. Namely:

• Current interpretation of the law allows multiple charges arising from the same event to be counted individually rather than transactionally when determining habitual sentencing status. That means that a person with a clear record could have an altercation with police resulting in three charges and convictions and then have habitual sentencing status applied to them even though this was their first run in with the law. Safe & Just Michigan thinks this interpretation — the result of a court ruling — isn’t reasonable and should be challenged and changed.

• The Michigan Rules of Evidence — the guidelines that stipulate how the courts in Michigan operate — state that “where a prior conviction is more than 10 years old, the conviction should be rarely admitted and only if the court finds that the probative value substantially outweighs the prejudicial effect.” Sentencing guidelines similarly contain a 10-year lookback period. In other words, judges and prosecutors should ignore convictions that are more than 10 years old unless the meaning and impact of a particular conviction is greater than its ability to turn a jury or judge against a defendant. However, habitual sentencing status instead says any conviction, no matter how old, can be used against you to trigger a habitual charge.

• We believe there will be opportunities to address the problems with Michigan’s habitual sentencing law in the coming months, and we’re ready to work with anyone in the Legislature who wants to work with us. We’ll let you know as more develops.

Help amplify Inside Voices

Inside Voices is a written by justice-involved people currently incarcerated in Michigan prisons that is published in our hardcopy newsletter. While space in the printed newsletter is limited, we are able to post more of them online for everyone to read.

If you would like to encourage someone who is incarcerated to submit a letter, please tell them they can send a letter of 300 words or less on criminal justice reform, pending legislation, re-entry or related topics to Inside Voices, c/o Safe & Just Michigan, 119 Pere Marquette Drive, Suite 2A, Lansing, MI 48912. To learn more, visit us at www.safeandjustmi.org. If you would like to join our efforts, email us at info@safeandjustmi.org or sign up for our newsletter at bit.ly/sjmsignup.