I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Two police officers from Inkster, a former drug prosecutor from Wayne County and a former Wayne County Circuit Judge were arraigned in state court on Tuesday, charged with a range of felony misconduct relating to the prosecution of two alleged drug dealers in 2005:
Former top drug prosecutor Karen Plants and two Inkster cops were arraigned today and face up to life in prison for an alleged conspiracy to use perjured testimony to convict two drug dealers in a 2005 cocaine case, according to charging documents filed this morning.
In all, Plants is accused of five felonies and two Inkster police officers are each charged with four felonies in the court documents, filed by the Michigan Attorney General’s office after a nine-month investigation. Among the charges faced by the trio is conspiracy to commit perjury, a potential life offense.
Retired Wayne County Circuit Judge Mary Waterstone faces four felony counts of official misconduct, according to charges filed this morning in Detroit 36th District Court. The maximum penalty for those felonies is five years.
The accused are considered innocent until proven guilty, of course, and they deserve the same due process they allegedly denied so flagrantly to others. But let’s not kid ourselves. This kind of thing is frighteningly common in this country. The war on drugs has produced rampant corruption in law enforcement and the examples are many.
In Atlanta, the fatal shooting of an elderly women during a drug raid revealed that virtually the entire drug task force in the Atlanta PD was corrupt, routinely planting drugs on defendants and coercing informants to sign fake affidavits used to get warrants. In Chicago a few months ago, a police officer turning state’s evidence testified on the witness stand that he and his partner had robbed drug dealers and bribed judges.
In Tenaha, Texas, local police used asset forfeiture laws to seize hundreds of thousands of dollars from people traveling through that little town of 1,000 people, charging only about 1/4 of them with any crime but keeping the money anyway by requiring the victims to sign over the cash in lieu of being charged.
One could go on all day listing cases of police, prosecutorial and even judicial misconduct, particularly in drug cases. Unfortunately, even when they are caught doing so, these law enforcement officials rarely face punishment. If these officials in Michigan are found guilty, let’s hope the consequences are serious. Such misconduct undermines the legitimacy of our entire judicial system and dooms innocent people to prison. Justice demands an end.
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