Judge Won’t Let ‘Jury’ Or ‘Appellate Court’ Or ‘Basic Rule Of Law’ Slow Him Down!

// In 2015, a Michigan jury convicted a woman of second-degree murder. Michigan law sets a guideline sentence of 12 to 20 years in prison for a second-degree murder conviction. So far, this is a pretty straightforward case.

But Judge John McBain decided the jury was wrong. And while judges can second-guess juries under some circumstances — throwing out tainted convictions, for example — McBain went the other direction and unilaterally decided the jury should have convicted the woman of a harsher crime. He went ahead and sentenced her as if the jury agreed.

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“You brutally murdered him in cold blood, and for that, by the power vested in me by the state of Michigan, you’re to serve 35 years to 70 years” in prison, McBain told Dawn Dixon-Bey at the 2016 hearing, drawing applause from the gallery.

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Well, that’s not what the jury said or the law says. When an appellate court heard the matter, it agreed. The case ultimately returned to McBain in 2020.

At this point, properly chastened, Judge McBain… sentenced her to 30 to 70. The guidelines had not changed, but Judge McBain offered this nugget:

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“I absolutely intend to sentence her at the very top end at 20 years, except that I just don’t think 20 years is an adequate sentence for this brutal, premeditated murder,” McBain said at the July 2020 resentencing, according to MLive.com. “I think I can still consider that evidence of premeditation and deliberation — even though she didn’t get convicted of it — it was evidence before the court and jury.”

The evidence was presented and who do these “triers of fact” think they are by rejecting that evidence?

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The appellate court has again struck this down and sent it to a new judge for resentencing, leaving this note on Judge McBain’s proverbial locker:

“If a trial judge is unable to follow the law as determined by a higher appellate court, the trial judge is in the wrong line of work,” the appeals court said.

Unfortunately, it seems like he’s in exactly the right line of work. He’s been reelected repeatedly, he runs unopposed, and the only punishment he seems to get for his shenanigans is a lighter work load.

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To get a gig any better, he’d have to whine about academic freedom!

A controversial judge defied a higher court. It’s now suggesting he’s unfit for the bench: ‘Wrong line of work.’ [Washington Post]

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Courts, Legal Ethics, State Judges