ADRIAN — A man convicted in 2018 by a Lenawee County Circuit Court jury of engaging in sex acts with the son and daughter of his on-again, off-again girlfriend and wife should have his minimum sentence reduced again, a Michigan Court of Appeals panel has ordered.

David Alan Stevens’ minimum sentence on a conviction for first-degree criminal sexual conduct should be set between six years and nine months and 11 years and three months, Judges Mark J. Cavanagh, Kathleen Jansen and Allie Greenleaf Maldonado said in their opinion. The change is due to a prior conviction in Ohio being incorrectly used as the basis for a habitual offender enhancement.

“The record does not provide a sufficient basis upon which to conclude that the conduct giving rise to defendant’s Ohio conviction would have been a felony in Michigan, and therefore, the trial court erred by sentencing defendant as a habitual offender,” the opinion states.

This will be the second time Stevens, 48, has been resentenced. The new sentence will be about one-third of the original minimum sentence in this case.

Stevens, 48, is currently serving 14 to 75 years in prison after being resentenced in 2022.

First-degree criminal sexual conduct is punishable by up to life in prison.

Stevens was convicted in 2018 after a trial in Lenawee County Circuit Court of one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Judge Anna Marie Anzalone sentenced him to 21 years and 10 months to 75 years in prison.

The first time he was resentenced, the Court of Appeals found Stevens’ attorney failed to object to faulty jury instructions provided by Anzalone and he failed to request an instruction that would limit how the jury was to consider testimony about other acts that was given during the trial. The Appeals Court vacated the two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and ordered he be resentenced because of how the vacated charges had factored into the scoring for the minimum sentence on the first-degree charge as well as an error in calculating the minimum sentence. Anzalone’s new sentence was 14 to 75 years in prison.

In the latest appeal, a different three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals — Judges Mark J. Cavanagh, Kathleen Jansen and Allie Greenleaf Maldonado — agreed with Stevens’ argument that he had been improperly sentenced as a habitual offender. Stevens had prior convictions in Ohio for possession of criminal tools and nonsupport of dependents. For a prior conviction in another state to be used as a habitual offender enhancement, the offense must have been something that would have been a felony or attempt to commit a felony in Michigan, the opinion said.

Anzalone had determined that the criminal tools conviction would not have been a felony in Michigan. The nonsupport charge is a fifth-degree felony in Ohio, but the appeals judges said how another state classifies its offenses doesn’t matter.

“Establishing that defendant was guilty of a fifth-degree felony in Ohio does nothing to establish that this would have been a felony in Michigan,” the opinion states.

In Michigan’s law regarding nonpayment of child support, the opinion says, someone has to violate a court order to make payments in order to be convicted of a felony.

“The critical difference between these offenses is that the Ohio offense does not necessarily require the failure to provide support to be in violation of a court order whereas the Michigan offense does,” the opinion states. “Because the Ohio crime can be committed without there being a support order in place, it is possible for the same conduct to be a crime in Ohio but not in Michigan. Therefore, the knowledge that defendant was found guilty of this crime is not, on its own, sufficient to conclude that the underlying conduct would have been a felony in Michigan. Accordingly, sentencing defendant as a habitual offender with a violation of this Ohio statute serving as the predicate offense requires the court to ascertain some knowledge of the facts underlying the Ohio conviction.”

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There was no information in the sex-abuse case’s record about the underlying facts in Stevens’ nonsupport conviction, the appeals court said.

“There is nothing in the record suggesting that defendant was ordered to pay any such costs, suggesting that the conviction might not have arisen from the violation of an already-existing support order,” the opinion states. “Because we do not know if defendant’s failure to support a dependent conviction was committed in a violation of a court order, it necessarily follows that we do not know if the conduct giving rise to the Ohio conviction would have been a felony in Michigan.”

The prosecution had time to provide evidence that Stevens had violated a court order for support, the opinion said.

“Indeed, the initial resentencing hearing was adjourned specifically to afford the prosecution the opportunity to adequately address whether defendant’s Ohio conviction for possession of criminal tools would be a felony in Michigan,” the opinion says. “The initial hearing was adjourned in July, and the prosecution had until October to gather the information it needed to meet its burden. During that period, it decided to amend the information to list the nonsupport conviction as the predicate for defendant’s habitual offender status but failed to admit any evidence regarding the underlying facts of the nonsupport conviction.”

Giving the prosecution a second chance to meet its burden of proof would be against the principles of fairness and “implicate double jeopardy concerns because the prosecution’s failure to present sufficient evidence of an equivalent prior conviction is analogous to the reversal of a conviction based on insufficient evidence,” the opinion said.

The appellate panel rejected Stevens’ arguments in the latest appeal that his minimum sentencing guidelines range was not properly calculated.

— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The leader of Iraq will travel to Michigan on Thursday following a sit-down with President Joe Biden to meet with the state’s large Iraqi community and update them on escalating tensions in the Middle East following Iran’s weekend aerial assault on Israel.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s trip to both Washington and Michigan to discuss U.S.-Iraq relations had been planned well before Saturday’s drone and missile launches from Iran-backed groups. The visit has been thrust into the spotlight as tensions in the region escalate following the strike, which included drone and missile launches that overflew Iraqi airspace and others that were launched from Iraq by Iran-backed groups.

BIDEN TO HOST IRAQ’S LEADER AFTER IRAN’S ATTACK ON ISRAEL SPURS CHAOS ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST

Michigan holds one of the largest populations of Iraqis in the nation and many local Democrats have pushed back against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The state holds the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country.

The Iraqi prime minister is expected to land in the Detroit area Thursday evening and be met by local leaders, including Wayne County Executive Warren Evans and Assad I. Turfe, a deputy Wayne County executive. He will then travel to a mosque in Dearborn Heights to meet with Iraqi community members and officials to give an update on his meeting with Biden talking about the economic relations between Iraq and the U.S., according to Mohammed Al-mawla, a community member involved in the planning.

There are just over 90,000 residents in Michigan of Iraqi descent, the largest of any state, according to the most recent U.S. Census. In Wayne County, home to the cities of Detroit and Dearborn, 7.8% of residents identified of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry, alone or in any combination, the highest percentage of any U.S. county.

The concentration of those residents in the outskirts of Detroit has led to multiple visits to the area from officials engaged in Middle Eastern relations.

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Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to Biden, traveled to metro Detroit in March to meet with Lebanese Americans and discuss efforts to prevent the conflict from expanding along Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah operates. Multiple White House officials also traveled to Dearborn in February to meet with Arab American leaders to discuss the conflict.

Fears over the war expanding grew over the weekend following the strikes and the developments have raised further questions about the viability of the two-decade American military presence in Iraq. However, a U.S. Patriot battery in Irbil, Iraq, which is designed to protect against missiles, did shoot down at least one Iranian ballistic missile, according to American officials — one of dozens of missiles and drones destroyed by U.S. forces alongside Israeli efforts to defeat the attack.

A Macomb County woman recently won $2 million on a Michigan Lottery instant game she bought on her way to pick up a pizza.

The woman, 41, purchased the $2,000 Large game for $20 at Party Palace Liquor located at 49133 Schoenherr Road in Shelby Township, according to the Michigan Lottery.

While sitting in her car waiting for the pizza, she scratched the ticket.

“It was surreal when I realized I’d won $2 million,” she told the Michigan Lottery. “I called my husband to tell him the big news because I was so excited. I couldn’t wait until I got home!”

She said the purchase was unusual for her since her husband is the one who usually buys scratch off tickets between the two of them.

When she claimed the prize, she opted to receive it as a one-time lump sum payment of about $1.3 million instead of annuity payments for the full amount.

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She plans to use the money to pay bills and take a vacation.

The $2,000 Large instant game has three top prize of $2 million with two remaining to be claimed.