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.
Michigan has struggled for years with an underfunded public defense system, but the recent economic downturn has sent what was a dismal situation into what some groups including the State Bar Association of Michigan are calling a “constitutional crisis.”
A segment aired on NPR’s “All Things Considered” Monday evening used the Detroit area to exemplify the worst-case scenario of what could happen to struggling public defense systems nationwide. According to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s evaluation of Michigan’s public defender system, the state ranks 44th in public defense spending.
The segment lasted approximately 20 minutes and highlighted drastic examples of how the underfunded system is making public defense more disastrous than helpful in some cases.
For instance, many public defenders have to pay out of pocket if they want to communicate with clients before the court date or use investigators to uncover evidence for a trail. There are no funds allotted for long distance calls or jail visits between indigent defense attorneys and clients. And because public defenders are paid so little per case, some take as many as 100 cases at once, which makes the fair and competent representation mandated by the constitution seem like a distant pipe dream.
Many clients, NPR’s Ailsa Chang reports, are asked to plead guilty from the start regardless of the situation so that defenders won’t have to spend extra time and money on a trail.
In April, Michigan Messenger reported on the state of the Detroit public defense system by profiling Walter Swift, a man who fell victim to the flawed system when he was convicted of a rape he didn’t commit and waited 26 years in prison before he was exonerated.
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