Michigan Court of Appeals orders new sentence in indecent exposure case

ADRIAN — A man sent to prison after being convicted of indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person will get a new sentence due to a Michigan Supreme Court ruling this past summer.

The Michigan Court of Appeals last month ordered that Tyler Wayne Judy, 32, should get a new sentence based on the state Supreme Court ruling in a different case. Judy is serving the 135 months to 40 years to which Lenawee County Circuit Judge Anna Marie Anzalone sentenced him in February 2020. The sentence was based on the state’s sentencing guidelines and applied to each of the two counts of indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person that a jury convicted him of in December 2019. The sentences are being served concurrently.

Before Judy’s appeal was decided, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in a Monroe County case that under the state’s indecent exposure statute someone convicted of indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person can only be sentenced to the statutory term for that offense of 1 day to life or to the other penalties listed in that section of the law. Those define the maximum penalties for indecent exposure without the sexually delinquent person qualifier as being a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine or, if the person was fondling themselves, a misdemeanor punishable by up to two years of imprisonment and a $2,000 fine.

The ruling said that the sentencing guidelines do not apply in these cases because the statute sets a minimum sentence.

“The guidelines do not purport to trump the substantive penalties in the statutes that establish the criminal offense,” the Supreme Court ruling’s syllabus says.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in that case noted that only four crimes involving sexual delinquency among the 1,120 crimes covered by the sentencing guidelines have a defined “1 day to life” sentence.

Based on that ruling, the three-judge Court of Appeals panel in Judy’s case remanded the case to Lenawee County Circuit Court for resentencing.

Judy's case stemmed from two incidents in February 2019 at the Little Caesars pizza store in Tecumseh where Tyler was convicted of exposing himself to a woman working there. He also had prior convictions for indecent exposure and aggravated indecent exposure for incidents in 2017 at businesses in Adrian. Evidence of a third incident in 2017 in Adrian also was presented.

Judy filed his appeal based on several claims, all of which were rejected by the appellate judges, Douglas A. Shapiro, Stephen L. Borrello and Colleen A. O’Brien. They rejected Judy’s claim that two indecent exposure charges against him should have been tried separately from the indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person charge. When he was first arrested, he was charged with one misdemeanor count of indecent exposure and one felony count of indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person. At the preliminary examination in Lenawee County District Court, after evidence was presented about the two separate incidents at the Little Caesars store, Judge Laura J. Schaedler agreed to the prosecution’s request to add a second indecent exposure count.

The appeals court said Anzalone did not abuse her discretion in allowing the charges to be joined for trial.

“In each of the cases, defendant exposed himself to women in public places of business," the opinion said. "There was little potential for confusion; the cases were presented distinctively, and the facts were not complex."

The court also noted that “if separate juries or trials had been used, there would have been a complete overlap in the evidence. Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying defendant’s request for separate trials.”

Judy also claimed he was entitled to a new trial because at sentencing, “it was bought to the Trial Court’s attention that two jurors had been asleep at the trial during closing arguments.”

The appellate judges in Judy’s case said there was no evidence to support his claim that any jurors were asleep.

“Further, even accepting as true defendant’s assertion at sentencing that he saw two jurors fall asleep during closing argument, defendant has not provided any basis for concluding that the outcome of trial was affected,” the opinion said, citing a 2013 Court of Appeals case that specifically addressed a claim about a sleeping juror. “Defendant fails to articulate how he was prejudiced.”

The court also rejected three arguments that Judy received ineffective assistance of counsel, one related to the claim about the alleged sleeping jurors, another that his attorney failed to request a bill of particulars, and that a juror should have been challenged during jury selection for possible bias because the juror “disclosed that he knew the trial court’s bailiff and the city of Adrian’s former police chief, and that his niece was married to a police officer in Cincinnati,” the opinion said. “In response to further questioning by the trial court, the prospective juror indicated that he did not believe that these relationships would make it difficult for him to be fair and impartial. …

“Defendant presents no valid reason for concluding that trial counsel should have rejected the juror’s statement that he could be fair and impartial.”

The court also rejected Judy’s claim that there was insufficient evidence to convict him, that the case should not have been bound over to circuit court and that there was prosecutor misconduct.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Michigan appeals court orders new sentence in indecent exposure case