20261008_C375710_35_375710C.opn.pdf

Court of Appeals, State of Michigan
ORDER
PEOPLE OF MI V KENYA ALI HYATT
Docket No. 375710
LC No. 2013-032654-FC
Randy J. Wallace
Presiding Judge
Thomas C. Cameron
Daniel S. Korobkin
Judges
The Court on its own motion orders that the October 8, 2026 concurrence is hereby
AMENDED. The concurrence is modified in Section II, footnote 3 with minor, non-substantive changes
to correct a typo. The concurrence is amended as follows:
The old concurrence read: Sanders cited the 2012 Preliminary Quarterly Report, which was
immediately superseded by the 2012 Final Report. Because the Preliminary Report was superseded, it is
no longer available on the USSC’s website or, apparently, on any other publicly available website.
Accordingly, whatever that preliminary report may have contained, neither the 2012 Final Report nor
could I find any such finding in any other USSC Final Reports.
The new concurrence reads: Sanders cited the 2012 Preliminary Quarterly Report, which
was immediately superseded by the 2012 Final Report. Because the Preliminary Report was superseded,
it is no longer available on the USSC’s website or, apparently, on any other publicly available website.
Accordingly, whatever that preliminary report may have contained, the 2012 Final Report did not have
any such finding, nor could I find any such finding in any other USSC Final Reports.
In all other respects, the October 8, 2026 concurrence remains unchanged.
_______________________________
Presiding Judge
October 20, 2026

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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UNPUBLISHED
October 08, 2026
12:04 PM
v No. 375710
Genesee Circuit Court
KENYA ALI HYATT, LC No. 2013-032654-FC
Defendant-Appellant.
Before: WALLACE, P.J., and CAMERON and KOROBKIN, JJ.
CAMERON, J. (concurring).
I agree with the majority’s conclusion to affirm defendant’s sentence of 30 to 70 years’
imprisonment for first-degree felony murder. I disagree, however, with the majority’s reliance on
People v Eads, ___ Mich App ___; ___ NW3d ___ (2025) (Docket No. 357332), rev’d in part ___
Mich ___; ___ NW3d ___ (2026) (Docket No. 168205), for the propositions that: (1) a United
States Sentencing Commission (USSC) report defines a life sentence as “a period of incarceration
of 470 months (approximately 39 years) or more;” (2) a person in the general prison population
has an approximate life expectancy of 64 years; and (3) that the 64-year figure probably overstates
the life expectancy of minors serving lengthy prison terms. I write separately to address what I
believe is a reoccurring misinterpretation and misapplication of the USSC report in our
jurisprudence.
I. MISCONSTRUING 470 MONTHS AS A LIFE SENTENCE
By way of background, this Court began to go astray in People v Wines, 323 Mich App
343; 916 NW2d 855 (2018), rev’d in part 506 Mich 954 (2020). In Wines, this Court quoted
People v Sanders, 2016 IL App (1st) 121732-b; 56 NE3d 563 (2016) verbatim for the unsupported
proposition that: “The United States Sentencing Commission Preliminary Quarterly Data Report
(through June 30, 2012) indicates that a person held in a general prison population has a life
expectancy of about 64 years. This estimate probably overstates the average life expectancy for
minors committed to prison for lengthy terms.” Wines, 323 Mich App at 351 n 6, quoting Sanders,
2016 IL App (1st) at ¶ 26. But the 2012 USSC report says no such thing. Sanders misunderstood

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what the 470-month figure represented, and Wines’s verbatim adoption of that misunderstanding
has since been repeated in several published and unpublished opinions of this Court in recent years.
The problem begins with the 470-month figure itself. The USSC report did not actually
define a life sentence as being 470 months. Rather, it used the 470-month figure as an assigned
numerical value for sentences already designated as “life imprisonment” so that those sentences
could be included in the report’s sentence-length analysis. Nor does the figure represent a finding
that a federal prisoner has a remaining life expectancy of 470 months after being incarcerated.
Appendix A of the USSC report explains:
In cases where the court imposes a sentence of life imprisonment, a numeric
value is necessary to include these cases in any sentence length analysis.
Accordingly, life sentences are reported as 470 months, a length consistent with the
average life expectancy of federal criminal offenders given the average age of
federal offenders. Also, sentences of greater than 470 months are also reported as
470 months for some analyses.[1]
Thus, the 470-month figure is a statistical proxy, not an actuarial projection of the life expectancy
for federal prisoners. The USSC assigned a numerical value of 470 months to an otherwise
nonnumerical life sentence so that life sentences could be included in the statistical calculations it
was making. It is not an individualized determination that a defendant sentenced to 470 months—
or any other defendant, for that matter—can reasonably be expected to live for only another 470
months.
Admittedly, statistics can be confusing and easily misunderstood.2 But this Court does a
disservice to our jurisprudence when it takes a statistical convention buried in a 14-year-old federal
report, transforms it into a purported empirical finding about the length of a life sentence for federal
prisoners, and then applies that conjured statistical figure to Michigan’s prison population as a
shorthand for resolving complex constitutional questions about what constitutes cruel or unusual
punishment under the Michigan Constitution.
1 United States Sentencing Commission, Final Quarterly Data Report Fiscal Year 2012, Appendix
A, p 7, available at <https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-
publications/federal-sentencing-statistics/quarterly-sentencing-
updates/USSC_2012_Quarter_Report_Final.pdf>.
2 The USSC has used this 470-month figure in different statistical contexts over time, but none of
these uses support the proposition that Michigan courts have attributed to it: that life sentences are
defined at 470 months or more. Beginning with its 2018 Sourcebook, the USSC changed its
methodology, describing 470 months as a cap applied to sentences for statistical purposes, rather
than a proxy for identifying de facto life sentences. Although the USSC later used 470 months as
the threshold for de facto life sentences in its 2022 study, it only did so for that particular study.

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II. THE UNSUPPORTED 64-YEAR LIFE EXPECTANCY FIGURE
The same problem infects the oft-repeated assertion that a person in prison has a life
expectancy of approximately 64 years. Contrary to this Court’s recent opinions, the USSC has
never found that the average life expectancy of a federal prisoner is approximately 64 years.
Indeed, the USSC has never announced a finding about regarding the average life expectancy of a
federal prisoner at all.3 The only age-related figure that could conceivably be used to derive such
a life-expectancy estimate is the 470-month figure that this Court has treated as representing the
length of time a person serving a “life sentence” is expected to be incarcerated before dying in
prison. But even accepting that premise, the USSC data does not support a 64-year life expectancy.
The average age of federal prisoners in 2012 was 36 years.4 Adding 470 months
(approximately 39 years) to that average age produces an age of approximately 75 years, not 64.
Thus, even if we accept this Court’s interpretation of the 470-month figure as the expected
remaining incarceration period for a person serving a life sentence, the resulting calculation does
not yield the 64-year life-expectancy figure that this Court repeatedly cites.5
Nor does the USSC’s use of the 470-month figure establish that this represents a universal
measure of a life sentence. The 470-month figure is tied to the federal prison population and the
average age of that population. Nothing in this, or any other USSC report, supports treating 470
months as a measure of the life expectancy of prisoners generally, much less as a measure
applicable to Michigan prisoners. The leap from a USSC federal statistical figure to the
proposition that Michigan prisoners have a life expectancy of approximately 64 years is therefore
unsupported by the cited source.
III. MISAPPLICATION TO YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS
The final erroneous proposition derived from Sanders, that the purported 64-year life
expectancy “probably overstates the average life expectancy for minors committed to prison for
lengthy terms[,]” Sanders, 2016 IL App (1st) at 121732-b, ¶ 26; see also, Eads, ___ Mich App at
___; slip op at 9; Wines, 323 Mich App at 351 n 6, is even more problematic. The USSC Final
Report makes no such assertion, and Sanders provides no evidence to support this contention.
3 Sanders cited the 2012 Preliminary Quarterly Report, which was immediately superseded by the
2012 Final Report. Because the Preliminary Report was superseded, it is no longer available on
the USSC’s website or, apparently, on any other publicly available website. Accordingly,
whatever that preliminary report may have contained, neither the 2012 Final Report nor could I
find any such finding in any other USSC Final Reports.
4 United States Sentencing Commission, 2012 Annual Report, Chapter 5, p 41, available at
<https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/annual-reports-and-
sourcebooks/2012/2012_Annual_Report_Chap5.pdf>.
5 This disparity has only grown in recent years, as the average age of federal prisoners was 42 in
2025. United States Sentencing Commission, QuickFacts: Individuals in the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, p 1, available at <https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-
publications/quick-facts/BOP_2026.pdf>.

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Remarkably, this unsupported conclusion has been given full-throated support in our jurisprudence
as though it was an express USSC conclusion. It is not.
There is, of course, an obvious reason why a figure derived from the federal offender
population cannot simply be applied to youthful offenders like defendant. The 470-month figure
was developed in the context of a federal prisoner population with an average age of 36 years. A
youthful offender entering prison at 17 years of age belongs to a materially different demographic.
The point is that, because the 470-month figure was derived from and based on a specific
population’s average age, it cannot be used as a meaningful measure for a youthful offender who
enters prison decades younger.
The concern, therefore, is not that the 470-month figure has no legitimate use within the
USSC’s own statistical framework. The problem is that Michigan courts have attributed an
empirical finding to the USSC report that it did not make, and then used that purported finding,
together with a statistical convention designed for federal sentencing analysis, to inform the
constitutional significance of a sentence imposed under Michigan law. There are simply too many
differences between these two groups to justify treating the 470-month figure as a universal
measure of a life sentence or the 64-year figure as an established life expectancy.
Our jurisprudence should not compound our mistaken premise in Wines by repeating it
until it appears established. The USSC report tells us what its 470-month figure was designed to
accomplish. It does not tell us that all life sentences average out at 470 months, that federal
prisoners have a 64-year life expectancy, or that the 64-year figure overstates the life expectancy
of youthful offenders. When constitutional rights are at stake, statistical convenience cannot
substitute for evidence that actually supports the proposition for which it is offered. I therefore
believe this Court should correct its mischaracterization of the USSC’s statistics, even if doing so
makes the constitutional inquiry more difficult.
/s/ Thomas C. Cameron

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