The Raid, the Stop and the Request
The case began with a traffic stop. At about 5:20 a.m. on April 30, 2024, Delta County deputies stopped a vehicle in Rapid River. The vehicle belonged to the passenger; the driver was James Joseph Johnson. As the vehicle pulled over, a bag went out of the passenger-side window. The Daily Press quoted Prosecutor Lauren Wickman describing it directly: “They had thrown something out the window that turned out to be a large quantity of cocaine.”
Roughly two hours later, at about 7 a.m., the Delta County Sheriff's Office and the Michigan State Police executed a search warrant at the Northtown Crown Da'Bar on Sheridan Road in Escanaba, and at the apartment above the business where Johnson lived. Public Radio 90 reported that the search uncovered cocaine, drug paraphernalia and illegal prescription medication, and that the Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team had been investigating the suspects for several months. Both Johnson and Ronald David Frans of Gladstone were arraigned in the 94th District Court on May 1, 2024, on charges related to possession with intent to deliver cocaine.
On June 26, 2025, a request was faxed to the Delta County Prosecutor's Office. It described “the April 2024 Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team (UPSET) investigation of a bar in Escanaba, Michigan, which resulted in the reported seizure of approximately 4 ounces of cocaine, drug paraphernalia, and illegal prescription medications,” and asked for four things: defendant names or redacted identifiers; the prosecutor's case numbers; the final disposition of any charges filed; and, if a case were still pending, confirmation of its current status.
The office acknowledged receipt on June 27, 2025 and answered on July 3, 2025. It granted the request in part and enclosed “two (2) Judgement of Sentence related to the matter.” Both judgments name the same defendant. The second man arrested that morning does not appear anywhere in the eleven-page response package.
No produced document mentions cocaine, states a weight, or refers to drug paraphernalia or prescription medication. The judgments describe the offenses in the compressed statutory shorthand of the court forms — “CS-CREATION/DELIVERY OF A” and “CNTRL SUB POSSESS <25 GRM” — and neither alleges a quantity of cocaine. The “approximately 4 ounces” figure originates in the requester's description of press coverage. It is repeated in the office's letter only because the office quoted the request back. This page does not treat it as established, and it notes that the office did not treat it as established either: it neither confirmed the premise nor told the requester the premise was wrong.
Case Timeline
The chronology below separates dates that appear on a produced record from dates that appear only in contemporaneous public reporting. Where a date comes from a newspaper rather than a document in the file, that is stated.
Traffic stop in Rapid River
Delta County deputies stop a vehicle driven by James Johnson and owned by Ronald Frans. A bag is thrown from the passenger window. Source: Daily Press, June 28, 2025. No incident report, citation or tow record was produced under this request.
Search warrant at the Northtown Crown Da'Bar
The Delta County Sheriff's Office and Michigan State Police search the bar on Sheridan Road in Escanaba and the apartment above it. Source: Daily Press and Public Radio 90, May 2024. No search warrant, return, inventory or UPSET report was produced.
Both men arraigned in 94th District Court
Johnson and Frans are arraigned on charges related to possession with intent to deliver cocaine. Source: WLUC TV6, May 7, 2024. No arraignment record was produced.
Frans pleads guilty
Frans pleads guilty to one count of possession of 25 to 49 grams of cocaine arising from the traffic stop. Source: Daily Press, June 28, 2025. No plea document, judgment or sentencing record for Frans was produced under this request.
Johnson found guilty on both files
Both judgments of sentence record a finding of guilty on May 12, 2025, on Count 02 of each file, by plea. Source: the two judgments produced under this request.
Johnson sentenced in both cases
Circuit Case No. 2024-0000011271-FH: 38 months to 15 years in the Michigan Department of Corrections, with 217 days of jail credit, and $198.00 in fines and costs. Circuit Case No. 2024-0000011270-FH: 217 days in jail with credit for 217 days served, and $258.00 in fines and costs. The sentences run concurrently. Total financial obligation: $456.00.
FOIA request faxed
Two pages, transmitted to the prosecutor's office fax line and copied to the county administrator's fax inbox. Received by the office on June 27, 2025.
The prosecutor describes both defendants to the newspaper
The Daily Press publishes a story in which Prosecutor Wickman discusses Frans's October plea, his two-day sentence, his $908 in fines and fees and his twelve months of probation, and then explains why Johnson received a longer term. Source: Daily Press, June 28, 2025.
Notice of Denial dated
The county's Notice of Denial form carries the date “7-2” at the foot of the page — one day before the cover letter that transmits it.
Response issued — granted in part
The letter grants the request in part, encloses two judgments of sentence, describes privacy redactions in prose, and encloses a Notice of Denial checking only the redaction box. No fee was quoted and no extension was taken. Four business days after receipt.
The Two Defendants
Two men were arrested from the same investigation and arraigned the same day. The file the office produced describes one of them in detail and is silent about the other.
Note what the office was able to do. From its own file it produced Johnson's two circuit case numbers, two police report numbers, two tracking numbers, two charge codes, the exact date of the guilty finding, both sentencing dispositions, the jail credit figure, the fines broken into state minimum, crime victim assessment and DNA assessment, the name of the judge and the name of defence counsel. That is a complete dispositional record, produced without difficulty.
For Frans, the office produced nothing — not a case number, not a charge, not a judgment, not a sentence, not a sentence of explanation. The facts about Frans in the right-hand card above come from a newspaper, not from the public body that prosecuted him.
Figure 1 · Fines ordered, by defendant
The office produced the arithmetic for one defendant and none of it for the other.
Read this figure as a table
| Defendant | Fines and costs | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Johnson — MDOC file | $198.00 | Produced judgment |
| Johnson — jail file | $258.00 | Produced judgment |
| Frans | $908.00 | Daily Press reporting only |
What the Office Released
The response package runs eleven pages. Four of them carry substantive content: the cover letter, the Notice of Denial, the blank appeal form, and the two judgments of sentence. The rest is statutory excerpt, fax notification, fax cover sheet, the request itself and the county's FOIA policy page. Each substantive document is reproduced below as a redacted copy. Personal identifiers — the requester's name, address, e-mail, telephone and fax numbers, the transmitting station identifier, and the county employee e-mail address in the fax notification — have been removed. The defendants' dates of birth and state identification numbers were already redacted by the office. Nothing substantive has been altered, and the unredacted originals are retained privately.
No record of any kind concerning Ronald Frans: no case number, no charging document, no plea, no judgment, no sentence, no probation order. No register of actions for either of Johnson's cases. No incident report, search warrant, return, inventory, laboratory report or UPSET task-force record. (A later request, FOIA 25-234, did produce four laboratory reports; they are set out in Section 05.) No document identifying the bar, the address searched, or the location of either offense. No fee itemization, because no fee was charged. The absence of anything concerning Frans is the most consequential gap, because the request asked for “Defendant name(s)” and “the final disposition(s)” in the plural, and the office was in a position to answer in the plural.
What the Laboratory Actually Tested
A second request, FOIA 25-234, went back to the same office for the laboratory work behind this investigation. The office produced four Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory reports in seven days, at no charge, all under laboratory case MQ 24-101. They are the first documents in this file that describe what was actually seized and what was actually tested, and they change the picture in three ways: they name a third man, they put a number on the heaviest finding, and they show that no produced report traces to an item taken from inside the business.
| Report | Released | Source of the item | Finding | Quantity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record No. 1 | March 4, 2024 | Trash pull on or about January 31, 2024 — Agency Item #14, UPT 19-24 Supplement 1 | Cocaine residue on a plastic bag corner | Residue only — no weight |
| Record No. 2 | March 12, 2024 | Same item, Agency Item #14 | Latent print (friction ridge) examination, ACE-V | — |
| Record No. 3 | February 3, 2025 | Traffic stop — Agency Item #18, DCSO Report 24-813, UPT 19-24 Supplement 4 | Cocaine, Schedule 2 | Not stated |
| Record No. 4 | February 6, 2025 | Traffic stop — Agency Item #20, same stop | Cocaine, Schedule 2 | 26.4 grams |
A third name
Record No. 1 lists two suspects for the trash pull: James Joseph Johnson and Corey Allen Way. Way appears nowhere else in either response package. He is not in the judgments of sentence, not in the press coverage quoted on this page, and not in the office's June 2025 answer. The laboratory report is the only public record in this file that connects him to the investigation at all.
26.4 grams, not four ounces
The heaviest quantity in any produced laboratory report is 26.4 grams of cocaine, from Record No. 4, tied to Agency Item #20 at the traffic stop. That is a little under one ounce. The request that opened this file described press coverage of “approximately 4 ounces of cocaine.” No produced record states four ounces, and no produced record states a weight for anything seized inside the bar. The gap between the reported figure and the tested figure is more than fourfold.
Nothing from inside the business
Every one of the four reports traces to one of two places: the trash pull on January 31, 2024, or the traffic stop on April 30, 2024. Not one lists the Northtown Crown Da'Bar, or the apartment above it, as the source of an item submitted for testing. The public reporting said the search of the business uncovered cocaine, drug paraphernalia and illegal prescription medication. The laboratory file the office produced does not document a single item taken from inside the building.
These reports do not prove that the traffic-stop cocaine is the same cocaine described in the press as four ounces, and this page does not say so. They do not give a weight for the residue, which is a residue finding and not a quantity. They do not establish what, if anything, was seized inside the business. And they do not cure the omission at the center of this file: the office still never produced a single record about Ronald David Frans. A fuller laboratory file answers a different question than the one this request asked.
What the reports do show is that the office can locate and release specific, named records from this investigation quickly and at no cost when the request names them precisely. Four reports, seven days, no fee, no redactions. That is the same office that, thirteen months earlier, answered a request for the defendants' names and dispositions by producing one defendant's paperwork and staying silent about the other.
The Denial Form
This is not a denial of the request. The letter grants it in part and the form checks the redaction box. But the form is the document that carries the legal reasoning, and on this form the reasoning is largely absent.
There is also a date problem. The Notice of Denial is dated 7-2. The cover letter is dated July 3, 2025. The form that supplies the legal basis for the determination was executed a day before the determination it is supposed to explain. That is not fatal to the response — both dates fall inside the statutory period — but it is a small window into how the package was assembled: the boilerplate was completed first and the reasoning fitted to it afterwards.
And there is a substantive mismatch. The redactions actually applied to the judgments are date of birth and state identification number. The letter describes the redacted material as “telephone numbers, dates of births, telephone numbers.” Neither judgment contains a telephone number, and no telephone number appears anywhere in the two pages produced. The stated basis describes material that is not in the records, while omitting one category that is: the SID.
Analysis
The sections below separate documented fact, the office's own assertions, and this site's interpretation. Where the law is clear the statute is quoted. Where the answer depends on facts not in the record, that is said plainly.
1. The request asked for two defendants. The office produced one.
The request did not ask for “the defendant.” It asked for “Defendant name(s) or redacted identifiers, if redaction is required” and for “the final disposition(s) of any charges filed.” The plural is not incidental. The request describes an investigation that “resulted in the reported seizure” at a bar, and asks who was charged and what happened to the charges.
Two men were charged. That is not an inference from this site; it is in the office's own public statements and in the reporting of three separate news organizations. Public Radio 90 named “James Johnson of Escanaba and Ronald Frans of Gladstone” on May 7, 2024. WLUC published the same two names with a sheriff's office photograph the same week. The Daily Press on June 28, 2025 named both men and described both dispositions.
The office produced two judgments of sentence. Both name James Joseph Johnson. The word “Frans” does not appear in the eleven-page response package, in either judgment, in the cover letter, or on the Notice of Denial. The request was answered in the singular.
2. The office knew about Frans, because its own prosecutor described his sentence to the newspaper
This is the part of the record that is hardest to explain away. On June 28, 2025, the Daily Press published a story by Noah Johnson headed “Escanaba man gets up to 15 years on drug charge.” It reports that Frans “was arrested and pled guilty in October of 2024 to one count of possession of 25 to 49 grams of cocaine related to the traffic stop,” that he was sentenced to two days in jail with credit for the two days already served, that he was ordered to pay $908 in fines and fees, and that he was placed on probation for twelve months.
The story quotes Prosecutor Wickman directly, explaining the disparity between the two men: “His (Frans) criminal history was significantly less than Mr. Johnson's,” and “Our investigation indicated that he (Johnson) was more of the leader involved, whereas Mr. Frans was a participant but not as actively or as not as significantly.”
The response letter is dated July 3, 2025 — three business days after that story ran. The office therefore knew, on the date it signed the response, that there were two defendants, that one had pleaded guilty eight months earlier, and what his sentence had been. It produced the file for the other one and said nothing about him.
This site does not assert a motive. It asserts the sequence, because the sequence is documented: the office possessed the information, had described it publicly, and omitted it from a response to a request that asked for it by name and in the plural.
3. Silence is not segregation
Michigan's act does not permit a public body to answer part of a request and quietly drop the rest. MCL 15.244 provides that if a public record contains material that is exempt, the public body “shall separate the exempt and nonexempt material and make the nonexempt material available for examination and copying.” The duty is to separate and release, not to select the portion that is convenient.
Where material is in fact separated or deleted, MCL 15.235(5)(c) requires the denial notice to contain “a description of a public record or information on a public record that is separated or deleted under section 14.” Nothing in this response describes anything separated with respect to Frans, because nothing in this response mentions Frans at all. A requester cannot evaluate, and cannot appeal, an omission the public body has not acknowledged making.
The distinction matters practically. A redaction is visible: the page is produced with a black bar, the requester knows something was removed, and can challenge the removal. An omission is invisible: the requester receives a coherent-looking package, assumes it is the whole answer, and never learns that a second defendant existed. The second is harder to detect and harder to remedy, which is why the statute's segregation duty is written as an obligation and not as a courtesy.
4. The charge produced is an analogue charge, not a cocaine charge
The judgment in Circuit Case No. 2024-0000011271-FH records the offense as “CS-CREATION/DELIVERY OF A” under charge code 333.74022E. That code is MCL 333.7402(2)(e), which covers creating, manufacturing, delivering, or possessing with intent to deliver “a controlled substance analogue” intended for human consumption, and provides that a violation is “a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 15 years or a fine of not more than $250,000.00, or both.” The 15-year maximum on the judgment is the analogue maximum, not the cocaine maximum.
The Daily Press describes the same plea as “creation/delivery of analogs,” which is consistent. The second judgment, in Case No. 2024-0000011270-FH, records “CNTRL SUB POSSESS <25 GRM” under charge code 333.74032A5 — possession of a controlled substance in an amount less than 25 grams, which the Daily Press describes as “possession of a controlled substance – less than 25 grams.”
So the two documents the office produced do not say what the request assumed. The request was built around “approximately 4 ounces of cocaine, drug paraphernalia, and illegal prescription medications.” Neither judgment mentions cocaine. Neither states a weight in grams or ounces. Neither mentions paraphernalia or prescription medication. Neither identifies the bar, the address searched, or the location of the offense.
That is not, by itself, misconduct. A judgment of sentence is a short court form and is not expected to narrate the investigation. But it does mean the response did not answer the question that was asked. A requester who read only these two documents would not learn that the case involved cocaine at all, would not learn that a second defendant existed, and would not learn that the seizure described in the request had been charged as an analogue offense rather than a cocaine offense. The office was in a position to say so in one sentence, and did not.
5. The redaction rationale is stated but the exemption is not
The letter says items were redacted “as the information is of a personal nature where public disclosure of the information would clearly constitute an unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy, to include but not limited to: telephone numbers, dates of births, telephone numbers.”
That sentence is a paraphrase of MCL 15.243(1)(a), which exempts information “of a personal nature where the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy.” The paraphrase is accurate as far as it goes. What it does not do is cite the provision, and the Notice of Denial's dedicated subsection field was left blank.
This is the same defect documented on FOIA 25-131 and 25-132, and it is worth being precise about why it matters. Section 13 is not a blanket privacy shield. The exemption is discretionary — the body “may” exempt such information — and it requires a judgment that the privacy interest outweighs the public interest in disclosure. A notice that recites the statutory phrase without identifying the subsection, and without any indication that the balancing was performed, does not let the requester see what was decided or why. MCL 15.235(5)(a) requires “an explanation of the basis,” and a citation is the minimum content of an explanation when the statute is organized into numbered exemptions.
There is a further oddity. The list names “telephone numbers” twice and “dates of births” once. No telephone number appears on either judgment. The state identification number, which was redacted, is not named. The description does not match the redactions it purports to describe.
6. The redactions actually applied are defensible. The stated basis for them is not.
It is worth separating two questions that are easy to conflate. The first is whether the office was entitled to redact a date of birth and a state identification number from a judgment of sentence. The second is whether the office explained that decision adequately.
On the first, the answer is probably yes. A date of birth and an SID are the classic identifiers used for identity theft and for database matching, and Michigan public bodies routinely redact them under section 13(1)(a). The office did not redact the defendant's name, his case numbers, his tracking numbers, the charges, the statutes, the sentences, the jail credit or the fines. Those are the facts that matter to public accountability, and they were released in full.
On the second, the answer is no. The form's subsection field is blank; the letter cites no provision; the balancing of public interest against privacy is nowhere described; and the list of redacted categories does not match the redactions. A requester who wanted to challenge the SID redaction would have to guess which subsection was applied.
The distinction is not pedantry. A public body that redacts correctly but explains itself badly has still complied with the substance of the act and failed its procedure. A public body that does both badly has done neither. This response is in the first category on redactions, and in a different category altogether on Frans.
7. The response was timely, and it cost nothing
It should be said clearly, because a critique that overstates its case is worth less than one that does not: the office met its deadline and charged no fee.
The request was faxed on the evening of June 26, 2025. Under MCL 15.235(1), a request sent by facsimile is received one business day after transmission, so receipt is deemed to be Friday, June 27. Counting business days from June 27 under MCL 15.235(2), the five-day period ran to Friday, July 4 — and because July 4, 2025 fell on a Friday and is a legal holiday, the practical deadline extended past it. The determination issued on Thursday, July 3, the fourth business day. No extension notice was required and none was issued.
The fee was zero. For a request that required locating two case files, reviewing them, applying redactions and drafting a letter, the office charged nothing. That is a genuine point of contrast with other requests to the same office, several of which have carried four-figure quotes, and it is discussed in the comparison below.
Timeliness and a zero fee are the two things the act makes easiest to measure. The office got both right. The problems in this file are not about speed or cost. They are about who was left out of the answer.
8. What the records do not establish — and why that is stated here
Several claims circulate around this incident that the produced records do not support. Each is worth separating out, because repeating an unverified detail is how a watchdog page becomes indistinguishable from the thing it criticises.
The quantity. “Approximately 4 ounces of cocaine” appears in the request and in the office's quotation of the request. It does not appear in either judgment, neither of which alleges any weight. Reporting at the time described “more than 4 ounces,” but no produced record states a quantity, a field-test result or a laboratory result.
The analogue. The judgment's charge code establishes that the delivery count was charged as a controlled substance analogue offense. It does not establish what the analogue was, and this page does not speculate. The Daily Press refers to “analogs” in the plural without naming a substance.
The relationship between the two files. The Daily Press reports that the delivery charge “stems from the traffic stop” and the possession charge “stems from the search warrant” at Johnson's residence. The two judgments are consistent with that account but do not themselves state it. No produced document connects the two case numbers to each other or to a specific location.
Frans's case number and statute. These are not in the file. This page reports his plea, sentence, fine and probation as newspaper-reported facts and does not supply a case number or a statute that no document supports.
None of this weakens the central finding. The central finding does not depend on the weight of the drugs or on the identity of the analogue. It depends on the request asking for defendants in the plural, on two men having been charged, and on the response naming one.
Transparency Concerns
The questions below are the ones a reader of this file would reasonably ask, and the ones the response does not answer. They are framed as questions rather than conclusions because the underlying facts are in the office's possession and not in the public record.
The judgments of sentence for both defendants, or an explanation of why Frans's were withheld and under which exemption. A register of actions for each case, which would have answered the “final disposition” question in a page. A denial notice naming the section 13 subsection applied to each redaction and describing what was removed, as MCL 15.235(5)(a) and (c) require. And, if the office took the view that the request's premise was inaccurate, a sentence saying so — because a public body that knows the requester is looking for the wrong thing and says nothing has not served the purpose of the act.
Comparison With Other Requests to the Same Office
This request belongs to a batch of seven faxed to the same office on the same evening in June 2025. Setting 25-130 against two others from that batch shows how differently the same office treated similar requests within days of each other.
| Factor | #25-130 This case |
#25-131 Two-case traffic stop |
#25-132 Rapid River felonies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | One investigation, two defendants | One stop, two defendants | One arrest, three felonies |
| Determination | Granted in part | Granted in part | Granted in part |
| Defendants named in request | Plural — “name(s)” | Plural — two men | Singular |
| Defendants' records produced | 1 of 2 | 2 of 2, one disposition withheld | 1 of 1 |
| Disposition produced | Yes, for one defendant | Yes for one, denied for the other | Yes — nolle prosequi |
| Certificate of nonexistence | No | Yes, and contradicted | No |
| Exemption cited | None — subsection blank | MCL 15.232(h)(iv) | Section 13, unspecified |
| Segregation discussed | No | No | No |
| Fee quoted | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Response time | 4 business days | 4 business days | 4 business days |
| Core problem | A co-defendant omitted entirely | Two contradictory denial grounds | Dismissal on an unverifiable assertion |
Three requests, three responses, all issued within the statutory period, all at no charge, all granting in part. On the measurable procedural questions the office performs consistently well. The differences are in what the answers contain.
And the comparison sharpens the point about Frans. In 25-131 the office at least acknowledged the second defendant: it produced his charging information and then denied his disposition on two incompatible grounds, which is a defective answer but still an answer. In 25-130 it did not acknowledge the second defendant at all. The requester had no way to know, from the package alone, that a second man had been charged, let alone that he had pleaded guilty and been sentenced. That is a more complete form of withholding than a denial, because a denial at least tells the requester there is something to appeal.
The fee contrast is worth one more note. All three of these requests produced documents at no charge. Other requests to this office — for aggregate statistics, for example — have been quoted at four figures. Whatever explains that difference, it is not the volume of paper or the difficulty of the search.
FOIA Request Details
What was requested
“Pursuant to the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (MCL 15.231 et seq.), I respectfully request public records related to the April 2024 Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team (UPSET) investigation of a bar in Escanaba, Michigan, which resulted in the reported seizure of approximately 4 ounces of cocaine, drug paraphernalia, and illegal prescription medications.”
FOIA Request #25-130, June 26, 2025
The request then listed four items: defendant name or names, or redacted identifiers if redaction was required; the prosecutor's case numbers; the final disposition of any charges filed, whether by plea, verdict or dismissal; and, if the case were still pending, confirmation of its current status. It closed by limiting itself to records already in existence, offering that “a copy of the final charging document, case status sheet, or docket summary would be sufficient,” and asking for a written estimate if the cost would exceed $20.
What was provided
Two judgments of sentence for James Joseph Johnson, in Circuit Case Nos. 2024-0000011271-FH and 2024-0000011270-FH, with dates of birth and state identification numbers redacted. The judgments establish the charges, the statutes, the plea date, both sentences, the jail credit, the fines and the judge. No fee was charged.
What was withheld
Everything concerning Ronald David Frans: his case number, charging documents, plea, judgment, sentence, fines and probation. A description of the redacted material that matches the redactions actually made. The section 13 subsection applied. Any register of actions. Any record identifying the bar, the address searched, or the location of either offense. Any document confirming or correcting the request's premise about cocaine, weight, paraphernalia or prescription medication.
Remedies, Deadlines and Next Steps
The statutory appeal window for this determination has closed. That does not close the questions, and it is worth setting out what the options were and what remains.
The window that ran
Under MCL 15.240(1), a person denied all or part of a request may either submit a written appeal to the head of the public body that specifically states the word “appeal” and identifies the reasons for reversal, or commence a civil action in the circuit court. Both routes carry a 180-day limit running from the public body's final determination. For a July 3, 2025 determination, that period ended on or about December 30, 2025. As of this page's publication it has expired.
What a new request can still obtain
A fresh, narrower request is not barred by the earlier response, and a differently framed request is likely to produce a different answer. The productive framing is to name the record rather than the status. Ask for the register of actions in the Frans case, and for the judgment of sentence and any plea agreement in that case. Ask separately for the register of actions in each of Johnson's two cases. Ask for the search warrant and return for the Sheridan Road address. Naming a document is the most effective way to defeat a certificate of nonexistence, because such a certificate speaks to records sought “under the name given by the requester.” If the case number is unknown, ask for records “identifying the case number assigned to the prosecution of Ronald David Frans arising from the April 30, 2024 traffic stop in Rapid River.”
If a fee is quoted
This request cost nothing, but others to this office have not. If a fee is quoted, MCL 15.234(2) requires an itemization expressing both the hourly wage and the number of hours. A body that is not in compliance with the act's procedures and guidelines may not require deposits or charge fees at all, under MCL 15.234(4). Fee disputes have their own appeal path under MCL 15.240a, including a civil action within 45 days and a $500 civil fine plus up to $500 in punitive damages where the reduction is at least 50 percent.
If a denial is appealed or litigated
In circuit court the burden is on the public body to sustain the denial, and review is de novo. Where the court finds that the body arbitrarily and capriciously violated the act, MCL 15.240(7) provides for a civil fine of $1,000 and punitive damages of $1,000, in addition to attorney fees, costs and disbursements. A requester who prevails on a fee dispute under MCL 15.240a faces a lower threshold: a reduction of at least half the fee.
What this site will do
This page will be updated if the office produces a record concerning Frans, revises its redaction description, or explains why a request that asked for defendants in the plural was answered in the singular. Corrections of fact are published as corrections, not as silent edits. Anyone with a document that bears on the points above is invited to send it.
Sources and Method
This page was built from two files: the eleven-page response package released under FOIA Request #25-130, and the four pages of responsive records enclosed with it. Both were read in full, and every quotation from the office is transcribed from those pages. The redacted PDFs linked in Section 04 are faithful copies with personal identifiers removed; the unredacted originals are retained privately and are available to the county, to counsel, or to a court on request.
Section 05 draws on a second response package: the twenty-three pages released under FOIA Request #25-234 on October 8, 2025, including four Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory reports under laboratory case MQ 24-101 and two certificates of nonexistence. Those records are published in redacted form with that request and are linked from its page. Where this page states a laboratory finding, the finding is transcribed from the face of one of those four reports; where it states a weight, the weight is the one the report records.
Three contemporaneous news accounts were used to establish facts that the produced records do not contain: Public Radio 90's report of May 7, 2024 by Nicole Walton, naming both defendants and the Northtown Crown Da'Bar; WLUC TV6's report of the same week on the arraignments in the 94th District Court; and the Daily Press report of June 28, 2025 by Noah Johnson, which describes both sentences and quotes the prosecutor. Where a fact comes from one of those accounts rather than from a produced document, the text says so. Newspaper reporting is treated here as evidence of what was publicly stated, not as a substitute for a court record.
Statutory text is quoted from the Michigan Compiled Laws as published by the Michigan Legislature. The provisions relied on are MCL 15.232 (definitions), MCL 15.235 (response and denial requirements, including the fax-receipt rule and the contents of a denial), MCL 15.240 (appeals and remedies), MCL 15.240a (fee appeals), MCL 15.243 (exemptions, including the privacy exemption), MCL 15.244 (segregation), MCL 333.7402 (controlled substance analogues) and MCL 333.7403 (possession). No judicial decision is cited, because the analysis does not turn on one.
Three categories of statement are kept separate throughout. Documented facts are things that appear on the face of a produced record — case numbers, charge codes, dates, sentences, fines, and the text of the denial. Publicly reported facts are things stated in contemporaneous news coverage, chiefly Frans's plea and sentence, and are labelled as such. Interpretation is this site's reading of the statutes and of the response, and is labelled as such. Where the record is silent, this page says it is silent rather than supplying an inference.
An earlier article on this site covered the same FOIA response and contained several errors that this page corrects. It stated the delivery charge as MCL 333.7401(2)(b); the judgment records charge code 333.74022E, which is MCL 333.7402(2)(e), the controlled substance analogue provision. It gave the maximum as “15 years, 9 months”; the judgment reads a maximum of 15 years, which is the analogue maximum. It computed a total of “$396.00”; the two judgments total $456.00, which reconciles exactly to the figure the Daily Press reported. It said the defendant “waived the right to counsel”; the jail judgment records that he was represented by an attorney, James Robert Maki. And it described the response as “complete and transparent,” which is not a characterization this page can support, given that a second defendant was charged and does not appear in the response at all.