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.
Gov. Rick Snyder has established a bipartisan commission to investigate how to improve the legal defense services provided to low-income people accused of crimes.
A new study by the Justice Policy Institute confirms what many previous studies have already found, that the lack of funding and attention to indigent defense has very high costs to society in both financial and non-financial ways.
A new report from the Michigan Bar Association says Michigan should establish statewide standards for the delivery of legal representation for the poor and shift the funding responsibility from the counties to the state.
In the latest twist in the truly bizarre history of an important lawsuit, the Michigan Supreme Court has now reversed its reversal of a previous ruling allowing a legal challenge to the state’s woefully inadequate indigent defense system to move forward.
Disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will now get two more attorneys on his defense team at public expense in his federal trial for tax evasion and fraud. The Detroit News reports that the judge in his federal case — not to be confused with the state trial for probation violations, for which he is [...]
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 [...]
The state’s highest court has thrown out an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that argued that the state of Michigan was not ensuring adequate representation for poor people who cannot afford lawyers. According to the Detroit Free Press, in a 4-3 ruling today the court reversed a May decision to allow the case to go [...]
The Michigan Supreme Court will hear oral argument this morning in a class action lawsuit challenging the state of Michigan for violating the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by failing to provide adequate legal defense for poor defendants who cannot afford their own attorney. The Associated Press reports:
When a major report a year ago concluded that Michigan’s public defender system was in a state of “constitutional crisis,” one of the major problems that was identified was that every county had its own system for providing indigent defense, with no state funding or oversight. That meant the quality and availability of indigent defense [...]
The Michigan Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the state’s public defender system. More accurately, to the state’s lack of a public defender system and the fact that each county is responsible for providing attorneys for indigent defendants without funding or oversight from the state. The lawsuit, a class action suit filed [...]
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