Legal Question in Criminal Law in Michigan

Re: sentencing guidelines

This cannot be answered without knowing, in detail, what the person's prior criminal history is, and what the details of the criminal case are. The former are factors regarding the Prior Record Variables under our guidelines, and the latter are factors under the Offense Variables.

The PRVs take into account prior felony and misdemeanor convictions (adult and juvenile), plus whether the person was on parole, probation or bond when the crime happened, whether there are concurrent felony convictions (e.g., other counts).

The OVs take into account a variety of factors, including use of a weapon, physical injury to a victim, contemporaneous criminal acts that will not result in conviction, a pattern of criminal behavior, whether the defendant was a "leader", amount of drugs involved, threats to the administration of justice, and terrorism facts.

I recommend that you -- or the person affected -- should sit down with an experienced criminal defense attorney to go over the criminal history, case facts, and guidelines.

In the meantime, you can look at a manual regarding our state's guidelines at: http://courts.michigan.gov/mji/resources/sentencing-guidelines/sg.htm . Be sure to FIRST read the Instructions and Definitions chapters thoroughly!! Then you can look at the Controlled Substances chapter to score the PRV and OV points for the crime. Then go to the MCL Crime List chapters to get the crime "Class" (A through H). Finally, open the Grids chapter, and go to the correct crime Class (A through H) and look for the column under the correct PRV score, and the correct row for the OV score. Where the two meet is your sentencing guildeline for the MINIMUM sentence (in # of months).