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.
A Michigan Court of Appeals in Ingham County has rejected a claim of immunity by the state of Michigan and allowed a challenge filed by the ACLU on behalf of a class of indigent defendants against the state’s public defender system to go to trial. The court’s full ruling can be read here (PDF).
The Associated Press has a report on the sorry state of the public defender systems around the country. As we reported earlier this year, study after study confirms that PD systems both in Michigan and around the country are underfunded, overburdened and entirely incapable of providing a serious defense for the accused. AP sums it [...]
DETROIT — When Walter Swift walked out of state prison after serving 26 years on a false charge, he forgot what freedom felt like. Swift said he was “terrified” to face a world he had not seen in nearly three decades because most of his adult life was spent behind bars. Due to an untrained public defender and a hurried investigation, Swift was convicted of a rape he didn’t commit in 1982.
Swift’s story exemplifies the problems with Michigan’s underfunded and strained public defense system, which has deteriorated to such a poor condition where a study by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association done in cooperation with the State Bar Association of Michigan called it a “constitutional crisis.”
A new report by the Constitution Project’s National Right to Counsel Committee has found that the problems in public defender systems around the country mirror those found in a study of Michigan’s system promoted by the Michigan Campaign for Justice. The reports concluded that the public defender systems in Michigan and in other states are [...]
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