People v. Abbatoy, 2026 Mich. App. LEXIS 538 (Mich. Ct. App. 2026)

The 1st District Court of Appeals vacated a sentence involving, finding that the trial court failed to properly consider youthfulness at the time of offense as a mitigating factor. The court stated in relevant part:

“Defendant argues that the trial court again failed to properly consider his youth at the time of the offense as a mitigating factor. We agree.

After a careful review of the record on the second remand, we are not persuaded that the trial court appropriately addressed defendant’s youth through the lens of the Snow factors and treated defendant’s youth as a mitigating factor, pursuant to Boykin, 510 Mich at 188-189. The trial court acknowledged that defendant appeared “for resentencing for the Court to provide additional clarification. . . that age was considered as a mitigating factor and to apply Boykin and Snow.” However, as we noted in Abbatoy I, awareness of youth is not “obviously” the same as treating youth as a mitigating factor in sentencing proceedings.”