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.
Prosecutors and law enforcement officials around the state say the closing of the Detroit Police crime lab two years has resulted in overwhelming backlogs in the other crime labs in the state, actively undermining the justice system in the state of Michigan. The Detroit News reports:
The Michigan State Police, which took over the dysfunctional Detroit crime lab in September 2008, is sending evidence in violent Detroit cases to other state, federal and private labs to be processed, which are putting local cases on hold, officials said.
At the same time, there is a backlog of 12,000 rape kits dating back to the mid-1990s and 2,700 other pieces of forensic evidence piled up in Wayne County alone, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.
“It’s a crisis of epic proportions,” Worthy said in a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State Police and Military and Veterans Affairs. “This has caused a huge problem for the entire state. This is essentially grinding the justice system in Michigan to a halt.”
She said the county is losing cases it should win because evidence isn’t being analyzed and cases are being dismissed by judges weary of waiting more than 90 days for evidence to be processed.
“It’s a dangerous business, and it’s not how we should be conducting justice in this state,” she said. “We’re getting really sloppy.”
Despite all this, the state is actually planning to close one of its seven crime labs this fall because of budget cutbacks. Gov. Granholm is asking for more funding for these labs in her proposed budget for next year, but with the leadership in both parties in the legislature insisting on all cuts and no new revenues, where is that money going to come from?
This is not the budgetary equivalent of plastic surgery; it’s not some unnecessary state service. There is nothing less than the operation of our criminal justice system at stake here. 12,000 women in this state who have been raped can’t even get their rape kits tested, which means their rapists continue to roam the streets looking for their next victims.
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