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.
Last week the Michigan Supreme Court reversed its own previous ruling and dismissed a lawsuit brought on behalf of indigent defendants around the state against the state’s piecemeal, underfunded public defender system. After voting unanimously to hear the case, four justices suddenly changed course and voted not to do so.
The Detroit Free Press editorializes against that decision:
Only one of the four, Justice Stephen Markman, bothered to articulate his newfound objections to the plaintiffs’ case, opining that nothing in the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of legal counsel required that lawyers appointed to represent the indigent be experienced, competent or required to establish a “meaningful relationship” with their clients. The other three justices — Maura Corrigan, Robert Young Jr. and Elizabeth Weaver — appear to have cynically concluded that, in a state preoccupied by widespread economic hardship, their indifference to the rights of a few impoverished outstate defendants will occasion little interest among voters.
Even prosecutors do not pretend that the current system guarantees fair trials for those too poor to hire their own attorneys. The number of individual convictions reversed and defendants exonerated after courts intervened to remedy the impact of ineffective legal counsel continues to mount, along with the cost to taxpayers who foot the bill for such do-overs.
The editorial called for the passage of a bill in the Michigan legislature to establish statewide standards and funding for a public defender system that is clearly in need of both. Michigan’s indigent defense system is — quite literally — criminally weak and unjust.
To give just one example, in the entire city of Detroit there are a total of five public defenders. They handle an average of 2,800 cases per year. Justice is simply impossible under such circumstances. And the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a right to counsel is rendered void and meaningless if that counsel is not competent or capable, due to a too-heavy workload, to provide a legitimate defense.
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