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.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy on Tuesday demanded a new trial for Dwayne Provience, a Detroit man recently released after spending nearly a decade in prison due to the work of the Michigan Innocence Clinic. The Innocence Clinic documented false testimony — coerced by the police — and a number of inconsistencies in his 2000 trial, leading to the overturning of his guilty verdict. But now Worthy plans to retry him on the same charges rather than allow him to get on with his life.
Dwayne Provience was disappointed but confident Tuesday when Wayne County’s prosecutor demanded a new trial after his murder conviction was set aside when law school students showed the sole witness against in the case recanted his testimony.
“It’s like deja vu all over again. I don’t see why we need to go to trial,” Provience, 36, said Tuesday after Wayne Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny set a new trial for April 5.
“I believe in my lawyers, though, and I believe there will be victory in the end. After 9 1/2 years, at least I get to celebrate Christmas with my family.”
Judge Kenny was the one who tossed out the guilty verdict after the Innocence Clinic, based at the University of Michigan Law School, convinced him that the conviction was obtained through both police and prosecutorial misconduct, including coercing false testimony and failing to turn over exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys.
The principal witness against Provience, Larry Wiley, testified that he had been coerced by the police to claim to have been an eyewitness to the event. He took the stand and identified Provience’s car, while seven real witnesses all identified a different car; none of the other witnesses were put on the stand.
The Innocence Clinic also found that another man subsequently convicted of a different crime, had confessed to the murder for which Provience was convicted and that the prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have helped prove his innocence to defense attorneys.
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