COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – A Lansing man with a history as a juvenile convicted killer was sentenced this week to 18 to 40 years in prison for a Branch County sex crime involving a 15-year-old girl.
Acting Circuit Judge Brent Weigle imposed the term on 47-year-old Gregory Wines, after he entered a no-contest plea in August to one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct as a fourth habitual offender.
According to court records, the girl told police she met Wines on the Nonames dating app.
He picked her up from her home, took her to a trailer at Trail Tree Village in Coldwater, and later bought Plan B emergency contraception at Walmart before returning her home.
Coldwater Police Det. Sgt. Sarah Gunneman used surveillance video and a Flock license plate reader to identify Wines’ vehicle and build the case originally charged by former Prosecutor Zack Stempien.
Wines, who spent nearly three decades in prison for his role in the 1993 kidnapping, robbery and murder of a pregnant Kent County jail clerk before being resentenced and paroled, faced a second solicitation case from a Jackson County sting that was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
In 1993, at 17 years old, Wines participated in a carjacking and the execution-style murder of 22-year-old Kristy Couch in Grand Rapids.
He was originally sentenced to mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama determined that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment.
A subsequent 2016 ruling made this change retroactive, forcing states to rehear cases for over 350 “juvenile lifers” in Michigan alone.
On March 23, 2022, a Kent County Circuit Court Judge resentenced Wines to a minimum term of 28 years and four months, precisely matching the time he had already served in prison.
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