COA 374525 PEOPLE OF MI V BOBBY JOE ZOLLMAN Opinion - Per Curiam - Unpublished 4/23/2026

If this opinion indicates that it is “FOR PUBLICATION,” it is subject to
revision until final publication in the Michigan Appeals Reports.
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S T A T E O F M I C H I G A N
C O U R T O F A P P E A L S
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
UNPUBLISHED
April 23, 2026
2:12 PM
v No. 374525
Otsego Circuit Court
BOBBY JOE ZOLLMAN, LC No. 2024-006729-FC
Defendant-Appellant.
Before: TREBILCOCK, P.J., and BOONSTRA and LETICA, JJ.
PER CURIAM.
Defendant, Bobby Joe Zollman, claims his above-guidelines sentence for robbing a bank
is unreasonable and lacks adequate justification. We disagree and affirm.
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
In May 2024, defendant walked into a bank and, after making various innocuous but
suspicious requests to a bank teller, slipped the teller a note demanding money and claiming he
had a gun. Then he told the teller, “give me the money in your drawer or I’m about to go crazy in
this place!” The teller complied. Defendant departed with cash, and a customer observed him
leaving the scene in a taxi as a passenger. Law enforcement officials later apprehended defendant
without incident in that same taxi. Although he concedes that he “represent[ed] or otherwise
ma[d]e one of the tellers fear” suffering “some type of physical harm” if he did not receive the
money he demanded, he maintains he did not actually have a gun during the incident, and no proof
concerning his possession was offered below.
Defendant ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery, MCL 750.531. The
sentencing guidelines recommended a minimum sentence of 5 to 17 months, but the trial court felt
that range did not adequately capture the seriousness of the offense or accomplish the goals of
sentencing. The court thus departed upward and imposed a 38-month minimum sentence. On
leave granted, defendant appeals.

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II. ANALYSIS
We review sentences that depart from the applicable guidelines range for reasonableness,
under an abuse-of-discretion standard. People v Dixon-Bey, 321 Mich App 490, 520; 909 NW2d
458 (2017). A trial court imposes an unreasonable sentence, and thus abuses its discretion, if it
violates the “principle of proportionality.” People v Steanhouse, 500 Mich 453, 459-460; 902
NW2d 327 (2017) (quotation marks and citation omitted). That principle requires sentences be
“proportionate to the seriousness of the circumstances surrounding the offense and the offender.”
Id. at 459-460 (quotation marks and citation omitted). “An appropriate sentence should give
consideration to the reformation of the offender, the protection of society, the discipline of the
offender, and the deterrence of others from committing the same offense.” People v Boykin, 510
Mich 171, 183; 987 NW2d 58 (2022), citing People v Snow, 386 Mich 586, 592; 194 NW2d 314
(1972) (citation omitted). Although advisory, the sentencing guidelines are “a highly relevant
consideration in a trial court’s exercise of sentencing discretion,” and courts must therefore consult
and take them into account. People v Lockridge, 498 Mich 358, 391; 870 NW2d 502 (2015).
Several additional factors are relevant to determining whether a departure sentence,
specifically, is more proportionate than a within-guidelines sentence, including: “(1) whether the
guidelines accurately reflect the seriousness of the crime; (2) factors not considered by the
guidelines; and (3) factors considered by the guidelines but given inadequate weight.” Dixon-Bey,
321 Mich App at 525 (citations omitted). “When making this determination and sentencing a
defendant, a trial court must justify the sentence imposed in order to facilitate appellate review,
which includes an explanation of why the sentence imposed is more proportionate to the offense
and the offender than a different sentence would have been.” Id. (quotation marks and citations
omitted).
Against this backdrop, defendant first claims the trial court violated the principle of
proportionality by departing from the recommended guidelines’ range on the basis of
circumstances for which the guidelines—and more specifically, offense variable (OV) 9—already
account. He presses this argument because he did not actually have a gun, there was no indication
the taxi driver knew what was happening, and no high-speed chase resulted from his actions, and
thus asserts the trial court abused its discretion by relying on facts not in the record that OV 9
failed to adequately address those he placed in danger. We disagree.
OV 9 considers the number of victims of an offense, MCL 777.39(1), which includes as a
victim “each person who was placed in danger of physical injury or loss of life,”
MCL 777.39(2)(a). “A person may be a victim under OV 9 even if he or she did not suffer actual
harm; a close proximity to a physically threatening situation may suffice . . . .” People v Teike,
348 Mich App 520, 528; 19 NW3d 733 (2023) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, the
presentence investigation report recommended the trial court assess zero points for OV 9, which
is appropriate when a defendant’s conduct places less than two victims “in danger of physical
injury or death.” MCL 777.39(1)(d). Neither defendant nor the prosecution challenged that
recommended score. The trial court likewise found the score appropriate but, considering the
number of people defendant could have endangered, concluded it inadequately accounted for the
seriousness of his conduct. That is, by robbing a bank while falsely claiming to have a gun,
defendant did not place the people in the bank, the taxi driver, or nearby members of the public in
actual danger of a physical injury or loss of life. He did, however, create the risk that they would

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become involved in the type of “immediate and very substantial and serious” law-enforcement
response often accompanying such a threat, which “in and of itself puts people in danger.” And if
each person he placed in a potentially physically threatening situation were considered for
purposes of OV 9, defendant’s recommended sentence would have been 19 to 38 months’
imprisonment, a range the court found more appropriate.
We see no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s reasoning. Indeed, “whether the
guidelines accurately reflect the seriousness of the crime” is a relevant consideration when
determining the respective proportionality of a within-guidelines versus a departure sentence.
Dixon-Bey, 321 Mich App at 525 (citations omitted). And while defendant’s zero-point score for
OV 9 may have reflected the number of people his actions actually placed in “danger of physical
injury or loss of life,” MCL 777.39(2)(a), or “a close proximity to a physically threatening
situation,” Teike, 348 Mich App at 528, because he lied about having a gun, that does not mean it
accurately reflected the inherently dangerous nature (and thus the seriousness) of robbing a bank
using the threat (even falsely) of a mass shooting.
Defendant next argues the trial court’s other stated reason for departing from the
guidelines—i.e., to better accomplish the sentencing goals of punishment and deterrence—failed
to justify the departure sentence imposed. In his view, the trial court “examined the four goals of
sentencing” but failed to “explain the extent of the departure sentence” or the reasons such sentence
was more proportionate, apart from its erroneous addition of points to OV 9. The record, however,
belies these claims.
In imposing the sentence, the trial court explained that a departure sentence was more
proportionate to both better account for the potential danger defendant’s actions posed to others
and more adequately serve the sentencing goals of punishment and deterrence. More specifically,
as to the 12-month, within-guidelines sentence the Michigan Department of Corrections
recommended, the trial court stated:
It certainly to me doesn’t provide any kind of deterrence. If people think that they
can rob a bank and do 12 months in the county jail to me that does not accomplish
the goal in deterring someone. And it certainly . . . doesn’t accomplish the goal of
punishment and provide an adequate consequence to [defendant] for [his] behavior
in this case.
The court found instead that a 19- to 38-month sentence “would more adequately address the goals
of sentencing, in particular deterrence and punishment.”
While we are sympathetic to defendant’s claims that more lenient sentencing and the
provision of resources would have better addressed the desperate circumstances that he asserts led
him to commit the bank robbery, he provides nothing more than a cursory citation to an apparent
published report to support the proposition that his personal circumstances rendered the departure

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sentence less adequate to satisfy the goals of sentencing than a within-guidelines sentence.1 See
People v Kroll, 341 Mich App 217, 236 n 15; 989 NW2d 822 (2022) (“An appellant may not
merely announce his position and leave it to this Court to discover and rationalize the basis for his
claims, nor may he give only cursory treatment with little or no citation of supporting authority.”)
(quotation marks and citation omitted).
Finally, defendant argues that his sentence is unreasonable because it is disproportionate
to his personal circumstances and those surrounding the offense. In addition to repeating
arguments that we have already found meritless, defendant claims—again without supporting
authority—that the sentencing guidelines do not “carry their regular relevance” in this case, “were
of little use to the trial court,” and are “entitled to little weight” because they do not account for
defendant’s mitigating circumstances. Namely, that defendant had a difficult upbringing; had a
17-year gap in his criminal record; and only committed the bank robbery out of desperation
because he faced homelessness. The trial court, he insists, failed to consider these mitigating
circumstances “and other individualized sentencing considerations” when it imposed the departure
sentence, rendering that sentence disproportionate. We cannot agree.
Although “trial courts are not required to expressly or explicitly consider mitigating factors
at sentencing,” People v Bailey, 330 Mich App 41, 63; 944 NW2d 370 (2019), the trial court did
so here. Before imposing defendant’s sentence, the trial court acknowledged that it considered
“the facts of this particular case” and defendant’s “personal history and background,” as detailed
in the presentence investigation report and emphasized by defense counsel at the sentencing
hearing. And the court expressly stated that it did not find defendant’s criminal history compelling;
instead, his ability “to conform to the requirements of society,” work, and support himself “over a
sustained period of time” constituted a “mitigating factor.” Contrary to defendant’s assertions,
then, the trial court considered the particular circumstances of the offense and of defendant’s
history, the latter of which it deemed mitigating. We again see no abuse of discretion in its ultimate
determination that a departure sentence was nonetheless appropriate given the seriousness of his
offense.
III. CONCLUSION
For these reasons, we affirm defendant’s sentence.
/s/ Christopher M. Trebilcock
/s/ Mark T. Boonstra
/s/ Anica Letica
1 Although we take no position on the propriety of defendant’s argument given his failure to
substantively brief this point, we note this Court has already rejected a defendant’s similar reliance
on the same article—Council on Criminal Justice: Task Force on Long Sentences, The Impact of
Long Sentences on Public Safety: a Complex Relationship, November 2022—as unpersuasive,
albeit in an unpublished decision. See People v Dupree, unpublished per curiam opinion of the
Court of Appeals, issued June 9, 2025 (Docket No. 369737), p 4 & n 2.

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