People v. Ruffin
People v. Ruffin
Opinion of the Court
In January, 1985, defendant was convicted by jury of two counts of armed robbery, MCL 750.529; MSA 28.797, one count of first-de
On defendant’s first appeal in this case, this Court on August 27, 1986, found that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on the lesser included offenses of armed robbery and first-degree criminal sexual conduct (Docket No. 84956). This Court remanded and directed the trial court to enter convictions and resentence defendant on two counts of larceny from a person, MCL 750.357; MSA 28.589, and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, MCL 750.520c(l)(e); MSA 28.788(3)(l)(e), unless the prosecution elected, prior to resentencing, to retry defendant. This Court affirmed the felony-firearm conviction.
The prosecution subsequently elected to retry defendant on the armed robbery charges but requested the lower court to resentence defendant on second-degree criminal sexual conduct. Defendant was retried and convicted on two counts of armed robbery. Defendant was then sentenced to concurrent terms of forty to sixty years for the armed robbery convictions and resentenced to a ten to fifteen year concurrent term for second-degree criminal sexual conduct. The trial court noted that defendant had already served the felony-firearm sentence.
In this appeal, defendant claims that allowing the prosecution to retry defendant on the armed robbery counts and to have defendant resentenced on second-degree criminal sexual conduct contravened this Court’s prior opinion in this case which
Defendant further argues that, since all charges arose out of the same transaction, the prosecutor violated the "same transaction” rule of the state constitution’s double jeopardy clause, Const 1963, art 1, § 15, when it elected to have defendant resentenced on one charge and to retry defendant on the others. We again disagree.
The same transaction rule interprets the double jeopardy clause to require the prosecution to join at one trial all the charges against a defendant that grow out of a single criminal act, occurrence, episode or transaction. People v White, 390 Mich 245, 254; 212 NW2d 222 (1973). The purpose is to prevent harassment of a defendant and promote the interest of justice. White, supra at 258. Since this defendant was originally tried on all charges, this case is distinguished from People v White.
That the same transaction test is inapplicable to defendant is further evidenced by the fact that previous panels of this Court and the Michigan Supreme Court, in multiple offense cases, have not remanded the entire case for retrial or resentencing where the trial court failed to instruct the jury on the lesser included offenses of one but not all the charges. Instead, the courts have affirmed the convictions of these other charges. See People v Thomas, 399 Mich 826; 249 NW2d 867 (1977) (the Court reversed the conviction of first-degree mur
Defendant’s assertion that People v Hooper, 152 Mich App 243; 394 NW2d 27 (1986), lv den 426 Mich 867 (1986), is controlling is unfounded. The Court in Hooper held that actually shooting the victim and attempting to shoot the victim after already injuring him constituted one assault and could not support separate charges. This Court held that to charge defendant twice violated the double jeopardy clause because it imposed multiple punishments for the same offense. Hooper, supra at 245-246. In the instant case, defendant cannot argue that armed robbery and esc are the same
Affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.