FOIA 25-134: The dismissed-case count the office certified does not exist — after taking an extension for the volume of records

Watchdog Alerts

Why isn’t this basic information available to the public?

1. The office took a ten-business-day extension because it needed to review “a voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records,” then denied the request in full because there were no responsive records. Both forms are in the same packet. One of them is describing something that did not happen.
2. The request asked for a number. The office certified that a record does not exist. Those are different claims, and the letter never distinguishes them — it does not say “no compiled report exists but the underlying case records do,” and it does not invoke MCL 15.233(4), the provision that lets a public body decline to compile a summary.
3. The office never addressed the measurement question. “Cases dismissed” can mean cases a judge dismissed over the prosecutor's objection, cases the office itself moved to dismiss, or cases disposed of without a conviction. The denial treats the request as if it were unambiguous and unanswerable at the same time.
4. The response gives no indication whether the answer differs before and after the office's case-management system went live in June 2024. A request covering all of calendar year 2024 spans both sides of that change, and the office said nothing about it.
5. The packet is eighteen pages long and contains no responsive document. Two of those pages say “This page left blank on purpose.” The office spent more paper explaining that it had nothing than it would have spent producing a two-line count.

Timing caveat. ProsecutorByKarpel went live in June 2024, and this request covers calendar year 2024, so roughly five months of the request predate the system. This page does not fault the office for lacking a system-generated dismissal report before June 2024. The criticism is that the office never said which months it could report on, or whether the system it adopted in June 2024 can produce this count at all.

On Friday, June 27, 2025, at 8:49 in the morning, a two-page fax reached the Delta County Prosecutor's Office. It asked one question, in two parts: how many criminal cases did the office have dismissed in calendar year 2024, split between felonies and misdemeanors. It did not ask for a defendant's name, a case file, or a document the office would have to write from scratch. It asked for a count, and it said so twice — once in the request itself and once in a sentence offering to take whatever form the office already had: “If available, an internal report, table, or spreadsheet summarizing these totals is acceptable.”

The office answered on July 17, 2025. It denied the request in full. The reason given was not an exemption, not a privacy interest, not a fee, and not a claim that counting would be burdensome. The reason was that the record does not exist, certified in writing by the FOIA coordinator, after a search, “to the best of the undersigned's knowledge and belief.”

Nothing was produced. No pages, no spreadsheet, no table, no number. The office did not quote a fee, did not offer to let the requester inspect anything, and did not identify a single statutory exemption. It did, however, take a ten-business-day extension first — and the reason it gave for needing the extension was that it had to review “a voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records” responsive to the request.

Those two documents sit in the same eighteen-page packet. One says the office needs more time because of the volume of records. The other says there are no records. This page is about that pair of sentences, and about what a certificate of nonexistence can and cannot honestly mean when the thing requested is a number.

Summary

FOIA 25-134 is a near-twin of FOIA 25-136. Both were faxed on the same morning in June 2025. Both asked for a single number covering calendar year 2024, split two ways. Both offered to accept any existing table, spreadsheet or internal report. Both set a fifty-dollar ceiling and asked for an estimate in advance. Both asked the office to name any exemption and release the rest. And both were answered on July 17, 2025 with the same two-page letter, the same certificate of nonexistence, the same Notice of Denial with reason box 2 checked, and the same blank appeal form.

The difference is the subject. 25-136 asked how many plea agreements the office offered and accepted. 25-134 asked how many criminal cases were dismissed. One measures the front end of a prosecution — the deal. The other measures the back end — the case that ended without a conviction. Together they describe the two most basic things a prosecutor's office could be asked about its own work, and the office certified that neither number exists.

Six numbers describe the outcome of 25-134, and five of them are zero. Zero pages produced. Zero dollars quoted. Zero dollars paid. Zero exemptions cited. Zero of the twelve months in 2024 addressed — the denial does not say which months the office could report on, or whether the answer differs before and after its case management system went live in June 2024. The sixth number is ten: the business days of extension the office took, for a request it then said required no search because there was nothing to find.

There is a version of this file in which the office is simply right. A prosecutor's office is not required to maintain a running tally of dismissals by charge level, and if no such tally exists, a certificate of nonexistence is the correct and lawful answer. That version is available on this record, and this page states it plainly because it is probably the legally correct one.

But the lawful answer and the accurate answer are not the same answer, and the gap between them is where this file becomes useful. A certificate of nonexistence is a statement about documents. The request asked for a count. Those are different things, and the office's letter never acknowledges the difference. It does not say “no compiled report exists, but the underlying case records do.” It does not say “we decline to compile a new record under MCL 15.233(4).” It says the public records requested do not exist — full stop — and then closes the file.

What was requested

The request is dated June 27th, 2025, captioned “Michigan Freedom of Information Act Request — 2024 Dismissed Criminal Cases,” and addressed both to the “FOIA Coordinator” and to “Prosecutor Wickman” at 310 Ludington Street, Escanaba. It was transmitted by fax at 8:49:22 a.m. Eastern, and the county's own fax platform logged it at that minute, two pages, from an out-of-state number that is redacted on this site.

The operative paragraph is one sentence long:

“Please provide the total number of criminal cases dismissed by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office for the calendar year January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024, broken down by: Felony cases dismissed; Misdemeanor cases dismissed. If available, an internal report, table, or spreadsheet summarizing these totals is acceptable.”

Five features of that request matter to how it should have been read, and the office's response engages with none of them.

It asked for a number, not a document. The words “total number” are the whole request. Everything else is a description of acceptable packaging. A requester who asks “how many” has not asked for a file; he has asked a question that a file might answer.

It offered the office every cheap route out. “If available, an internal report, table, or spreadsheet summarizing these totals is acceptable.” That sentence is a requester saying: do not build me anything elaborate. A database export, a screenshot, two numbers typed into an email — any of those would have satisfied it. The request even named the preferred delivery method: “electronically (PDF, Excel, or CSV) via email or secure download link.”

It set a fifty-dollar ceiling and asked for an estimate first. “If the cost to process this request exceeds $50, please provide a detailed written estimate in advance, as required by MCL 15.234.” This is the provision that most often produces a useful answer, because it forces the office to price the work. Here it produced nothing: no estimate was issued, because no work was priced.

It asked for exemptions to be named and for the rest to be released. “If you withhold any portion of this request, please identify the specific statutory exemption(s) you are relying on and release all reasonably segregable non-exempt information, per MCL 15.244.” This is the sentence that anticipates the most likely real-world objection — that case-level records carry defendant names, dates of birth, and other personal detail — and pre-empts it by asking for redaction rather than withholding.

It named the clock. “I look forward to your acknowledgment and full response within the statutory timeframe under MCL 15.235.” The requester knew the statute well enough to cite the receipt rule, the extension rule, and the segregation duty. This was not a request that had to be guessed at.

The paper trail

Figure 1 · Six dates, and one document that contradicts another

Select any date to read what happened and which clock it started or stopped.

Jun 27, 2025 Request faxed Jun 30, 2025 Deemed received Jul 8, 2025 Five-day deadline Jul 2025 Extension taken Jul 17, 2025 Denied in full Jan 13, 2026 Review window

Two details in the timeline are worth pausing on. The first is that the office dated its own receipt to the day the fax arrived. Under MCL 15.235(1), a request sent by fax is not received until one business day after transmission, which would be Monday, June 30. By recording receipt on June 27, the office gave itself a shorter clock, not a longer one. That is a small point in the office's favor, and it is noted here because accuracy cuts both ways.

The second is the extension form itself. It is in the packet, it identifies the request, and it checks reason box 1 — the “voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records” ground. But the two fields that would make the extension meaningful — the date to which the response was extended, and the estimated time frame to provide records — are handwritten, and in the copy released to the public they cannot be read with confidence. This page does not guess at them. What can be said is that the form invokes volume as the reason for delay, and the denial that follows says there was nothing to review.

The extension and the certificate

Here is the heart of the file. The office produced two documents that describe the same request in incompatible terms, and it produced them within the same response package.

Figure 2 · Eighteen pages of paper, zero pages of records

The packet is long because of the paperwork around the answer, not because of the answer.

Read this figure as a table

Measure	Pages
Pages in the released packet	18
Pages of responsive records	0
Pages marked blank on purpose	1

Set the two documents side by side and the problem is plain.

One of these statements is describing something that did not happen. Either there was a volume of responsive records to review, in which case the certificate of nonexistence is false; or there was nothing to review, in which case the extension was taken for a reason that did not apply. The office has never reconciled the two, and the packet offers no document that does.

It is possible to imagine innocent explanations. A coordinator may fill out an extension form as a matter of routine before the search is complete, checking the volume box because it is the most common reason, and then discover on searching that no compiled report exists. That is a plausible account of how a busy office works. But it is an explanation the office did not give. What the public has is a form asserting volume and a letter asserting emptiness, with nothing in between.

What was asked and what came back

The scorecard for this request is almost entirely empty, and the emptiness is the story.

A zero-dollar answer is not, by itself, a problem. It can be the honest price of a request that requires no work because the record does not exist. But a zero-dollar answer also removes every downstream remedy the statute provides. There is nothing to itemize under MCL 15.234(2). There is no estimate over $50, so no deposit is owed under MCL 15.234(8). There is no fee to challenge under MCL 15.240a. The requester is left with exactly one path: appeal the denial to the Board of Commissioners, or sue in circuit court within 180 days. And to do either, he would have to argue that a record the office says does not exist does exist — without any document from the office telling him what it searched for or how.

The measurement problem: what does “dismissed” mean?

There is a second gap in this file, and it is subtler than the extension. The request asked for “criminal cases dismissed.” That phrase sounds precise and is not. In Michigan criminal practice a case can end without a conviction in several different ways, and they are not the same event.

A case can be dismissed by the court, over the prosecutor's objection, on a motion to suppress, a speedy-trial violation, a failure to provide discovery, or a defect in the charging document. A case can be dismissed on the prosecutor's own motion — a nolle prosequi — because a witness has disappeared, because a victim has recanted, or because the office has decided the charge cannot be proved. A case can be disposed of by plea to a lesser or different offense, which ends the original charge without a trial and without an acquittal. And a case can end in acquittal after trial. Each of these is a case that did not produce a conviction on the charge as filed, and each is counted differently, if it is counted at all.

The request did not define which of these it meant. That is a fair criticism of the request, and this page states it. A careful FOIA coordinator confronted with an ambiguous term has an obvious move: ask the requester what he means, or answer under the most natural reading and say so. The office did neither. It treated “dismissed” as simultaneously unambiguous and unanswerable — clear enough to deny in a single sentence, but not clear enough to require any explanation of what was searched.

This matters because the two readings produce very different numbers, and because a prosecutor's office keeps records that would distinguish them. A dismissal docket, a court calendar, a case-management disposition field — each of these, if it exists, records how a case ended. The question is not whether the office could produce a perfect statistical report. The question is whether it looked, and what it looked at, before certifying that nothing was there.

The June 2024 line

Timing matters here, and this page is careful about it. The office's case-management system, ProsecutorByKarpel, went live in June 2024. The request covers all of calendar year 2024, which means roughly the first five months of the period predate the system and the last seven follow it. This page does not fault the office for lacking a system-generated dismissal report for January through May 2024, because the system that might generate one did not yet exist.

But that is precisely why the denial is unsatisfying. A request that straddles a system change is the one case where a short, honest explanation would have been easy and useful. The office could have said: for the months before June 2024 we have no report and would have to reconstruct one by hand; for the months after, the system records dispositions but not in the form you asked for. Instead it said nothing about the line at all. It certified that the record does not exist for the entire year, without distinguishing the five months before the system from the seven after it.

The manual for ProsecutorByKarpel is itself in this archive, obtained under FOIA 25-201. This page does not claim that the manual shows the system can or cannot produce a dismissal count; that would require a reading of the manual this page has not undertaken and will not assert. What the manual's presence in the archive establishes is narrower: the office has, in its own files, documentation of what its case-management system is capable of. If the system can report dispositions by charge level, the office knew it and did not say so. If it cannot, the office could have said that too, in one sentence, and did not.

The pattern: requests for a number

25-134 is not an isolated answer. It belongs to a series of requests in this archive that each asked the office for a number about its own work, and the office's responses to that series form a pattern worth seeing whole.

Read down the outcome column and a shape appears. When the office can answer a numeric request by producing an existing table, it does, and it charges for the work. When it cannot, it either certifies that the record does not exist or quotes a price so high that the request becomes a purchase rather than a disclosure. The two 2024 requests answered on the same July day — 25-134 and 25-136 — both took the nonexistence route. The 2024 request that produced a table, 25-133, was answered with a certificate of nonexistence and a table attached, which is the one combination that shows the office knows how to do this when it chooses to.

Figure 3 · What the office charges when it answers, and when it does not

A zero-dollar answer is not a discount. It is a closed door with no invoice attached.

Read this figure as a table

Request	Fee quoted
26-22 — conviction rate	$9,548.00
25-129 — case durations	$2,931.12
25-133 — monthly charge counts	$2,815.20
25-118 — outcomes Jan–Feb 2025	$1,041.60
25-134 — cases dismissed	$0
25-136 — plea agreements	$0

The pattern is not proof of bad faith. It is consistent with a small office that answers what it can answer cheaply and declines what it cannot. But it is also consistent with an office that has learned that a certificate of nonexistence ends a request more cheaply than a search does, and that a large quote ends a request more cheaply than a disclosure does. The public cannot tell which description is true, because the office does not document its searches.

The appeal, and the road not taken

The response letter tells the requester he may appeal to the chairperson of the Delta County Board of Commissioners or seek judicial review in the Delta County Circuit Court, and encloses a blank appeal form. The requester did appeal. Chair John Malnar’s letter of August 20, 2025 records receipt of the appeal on August 5, 2025 and the determination at a special meeting on August 18, 2025, upholding the denial. Its stated reason restates the coordinator’s position that the records “were deemed to not exist.”

That is worth explaining, because the Board appeal is not a formality. Under MCL 15.240(1)(a) a person may appeal a denial to the head of the public body, and under MCL 15.240(2) the head must act on the appeal within ten business days. Where the public body is a county office, the appeal runs to the county board, and under MCL 15.240(3) the board is not deemed to have received the appeal until its next regularly scheduled meeting. That provision can stretch the clock by weeks, and it is the reason a Board appeal is often slower than requesters expect.

The appeal had one clear argument available, and the Board did not engage it. The office took a ten-business-day extension on the ground that it needed to review “a voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records,” and then certified that no responsive record exists. Those two positions are difficult to hold at once. The Board’s letter does not mention the extension, does not describe any search, and does not explain the sequence. It also does not address the harder problem the requester faced: to win, he would have to show that a responsive record exists, and without a description of the search he cannot show what the office missed.

This page does not claim the Board ruled wrongly, and it does not treat an upheld denial as misconduct. It records what the two documents show together: a right explained, an appeal filed and decided within the statutory period, and a written determination that gives no reason beyond the conclusion it is reviewing.

Michigan law applied to this record

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The timing of the response is lawful. Under MCL 15.235(2) a public body has five business days to respond and may extend that period by ten business days with a written notice. The office's letter is dated July 17, 2025. Counting from a deemed receipt of June 30, the five-day deadline was July 8, and a ten-day extension would have run to about July 22. The July 17 response falls inside that window. This page does not allege a deadline violation, because there is none on these facts.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The certificate of nonexistence is authorized by statute. MCL 15.235(5)(b) permits a public body, when a requested record does not exist, to certify that fact in writing. The office's certificate tracks the statutory language. If no compiled dismissal report exists, the certificate is the correct instrument, and the denial is lawful on that ground.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The more interesting question is MCL 15.233(4), which provides that the act “does not require a public body to make a compilation, summary, or report of information, except as required in section 11.” That provision is the honest basis for refusing to build a dismissal tally from scratch. But the office did not invoke it. It did not say “we decline to compile a new record.” It said the records do not exist. Those are different answers with different consequences: a refusal to compile concedes that the underlying records exist, while a certificate of nonexistence denies it. The office chose the broader claim without explaining why.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The segregation duty under MCL 15.244 applies to records that exist and contain exempt material. It does not require an office to create a record. So the requester's segregation demand does not, by itself, obligate the office to produce anything here. But the demand did put the office on notice that the requester would accept a redacted version of whatever existed, and the office's silence on that point leaves open whether it considered producing a redacted subset of case records rather than nothing at all.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The remedy structure explains why a zero-dollar denial is hard to challenge. MCL 15.240(1)(b) gives a requester 180 days after a final determination to bring a civil action to compel disclosure. MCL 15.240(7) allows a court to award a $1,000 civil fine and $1,000 in punitive damages where the body arbitrarily and capriciously violated the act. But those remedies attach to a wrongful withholding, and a court cannot order disclosure of a record it finds does not exist. The requester's only route is to prove the record does exist, which is exactly the fact the office's certificate denies and its search does not document.

Authorities and sources

Show the statutes, cases, and sources cited on this page

• Michigan Freedom of Information Act, MCL 15.231 et seq.
• MCL 15.232(i) — definition of “public record.”
• MCL 15.232(m) — “written request” includes a request transmitted by facsimile.
• MCL 15.233(4) — the act does not require a public body to make a compilation, summary, or report of information, except as required in section 11.
• MCL 15.233(5) — the act does not require a public body to create a new public record, except as required in section 11.
• MCL 15.234(2) — itemization of fees by hourly wage and hours; fringe benefits up to 50 percent.
• MCL 15.234(8) — deposit of up to one-half of a fee estimate exceeding $50.
• MCL 15.235(1) — a request sent by fax or email is received one business day after transmission.
• MCL 15.235(2) — five business days to respond, with one ten-business-day extension by written notice.
• MCL 15.235(5)(b) — certificate that a record does not exist.
• MCL 15.235(5)(d) — notice of the right to appeal a denial to the head of the public body.
• MCL 15.240(1)(a) — appeal to the head of the public body.
• MCL 15.240(1)(b) — civil action within 180 days after the final determination.
• MCL 15.240(2) — the head must act on an appeal within 10 business days.
• MCL 15.240(3) — a board or commission is not deemed to have received an appeal until its next regularly scheduled meeting.
• MCL 15.240(7) — $1,000 civil fine and $1,000 punitive damages for an arbitrary and capricious violation.
• MCL 15.240a — civil action to challenge a fee, within 45 days.
• MCL 15.244 — duty to separate exempt material and disclose the remainder.
• Densmore v Department of Corrections, 203 Mich App 363; 512 NW2d 72 (1994) — on the public body's burden when it claims an exemption.
• Released packet for FOIA 25-134, Delta County Prosecutor's Office, eighteen pages, including the June 27, 2025 request, the July 17, 2025 response letter, the Notice of Denial, the Notice to Extend Response Time, the blank FOIA appeal form, and the county's fax receipt email.

What could still be done

The 180-day window to sue under MCL 15.240(1)(b) ran to about January 13, 2026, and that date has passed. A court action to compel disclosure on this request is therefore time-barred unless a filing was made within the window that does not appear in this packet. That does not close every door.

A new, narrower request. The most useful next step is not to re-ask the same question but to ask a better one. A request that defines “dismissed” — for example, cases disposed of by an order of dismissal rather than by plea or trial — and that asks for a specific existing report by name, removes the ambiguity the office used to deny. Asking for “the dismissal docket for calendar year 2024” or “the case-disposition export from ProsecutorByKarpel for 2024” names a document rather than a concept, and a certificate of nonexistence is harder to defend when the requester has named the file.

A records-management angle. If the office maintains a case-management system that records dispositions, the question of what that system can report is itself a public-records question. The manual obtained under FOIA 25-201 is the starting point. A follow-up could ask for the system's standard reports, its data dictionary, or its disposition codes — documents that would show whether a dismissal count is a query away or genuinely does not exist.

A Board appeal on a future request. The Board appeal remains available for any new denial. It is slow — under MCL 15.240(3) the board does not receive the appeal until its next regular meeting — but it is free, it creates a public record of the Board's response, and it forces the office to explain its search to someone other than the requester.

Documenting the pattern. The most durable response to a certificate of nonexistence is to keep asking, and to keep the answers together. This archive now holds two same-day denials of two basic numeric questions about 2024, side by side. That pairing is itself a record, and it is the kind of record that becomes evidence if the office's answers ever change.

Documents

These are redacted copies prepared for publication. Requester names, home addresses, personal phone numbers, and email addresses have been removed. Unredacted originals are not hosted on the public web server.

Related FOIA requests

• FOIA 26-292 — FOIA 26-292: The office used the requester's own cost-saving clause to withdraw the request, then offered to grant it if he removed the clause (Granted in part, denied in part — no records produced; the office conceded the data exists and refused the aggregate on the ground that the requester's own scope limitation excluded it, October 25, 2026)
• FOIA 26-291 — FOIA 26-291: The office answered a request for a privilege log with nine document titles — and cited a subsection of the FOIA that does not exist (Granted in part — a nine-row title-and-date table supplying two of the eleven requested fields, no count, and a citation to a subsection of MCL 15.243 that does not exist, October 25, 2026)
• FOIA 26-290 — FOIA 26-290: The office refused the victim-services records because it says you already have them — from a packet that contained none (Refused — five paragraphs labelled “granted” but zero pages produced, on the authority of a prior production that contained no responsive documents; the sixth paragraph received no disposition, October 25, 2026)
• FOIA 26-131 — FOIA 26-131: Twenty case files, priced at $82.66 before a single page is copied (Granted in part — release conditioned on a $41.33 deposit; no records produced yet, April 17, 2026)
• FOIA 26-35 — FOIA 26-35: The office counted 52 pleas in 85 minutes — eight days after saying the same kind of aggregate did not exist (Granted — 52 pleas reported from the District and Circuit Court dockets, no fee quoted, no exemption cited, no pages withheld; the count is over-inclusive by the office's own admission, February 9, 2026)
• FOIA 26-34 — FOIA 26-34: The office denied a count of diversion cases by defining “diversion” down to a programme it does not run (Denied — certificate of nonexistence under MCL 15.233(1), Denial Form box 2 checked, on the ground that the only diversion programme in Delta County is juvenile diversion administered by the Probate Court; no exemption cited, no fee quoted, no waiver determination, February 9, 2026)
• FOIA 26-33 — FOIA 26-33: Asked to count deferred prosecution agreements, the office certified the total nonexistent and priced the underlying data at $9,093.33 (Granted in part and denied in part — the aggregate record denied as requiring creation of a new record, with a certificate of nonexistence and Denial Form box 2 checked; the underlying data granted subject to a $9,093.33 estimate, a $4,546.66 deposit and a 270-day production estimate; public-interest fee waiver left undetermined, February 9, 2026)
• FOIA 26-32 — FOIA 26-32: What the office's own memos say about the migration that broke its records — a 95-page production that answers its own denial (Granted in part, denied in part — five records produced across 95 pages, with only personal contact information redacted under MCL 15.243(1)(a); no fee quoted, February 6, 2026)
• FOIA 26-31 — FOIA 26-31: Asked how many crime scenes a prosecutor attended, the office listed eight documents and denied them as duplicative (Denied in full — refused as a duplicative request under Densmore v Department of Corrections, on the ground that the eight listed records were already produced in response to FOIA 25-267; Denial Form box 1 checked with the section 13 subsection left blank; no aggregate figure supplied and no fee quoted, February 6, 2026)
• FOIA 26-30 — FOIA 26-30: Eight documents, one number, and a Densmore refusal built on a premise the record does not fully support (Denied — no aggregate total produced; eight responsive documents identified but not reproduced under a Densmore prior-production rationale; no fee quoted, February 6, 2026)
• FOIA 26-29 — FOIA 26-29: A count of inherited convictions the office could not locate — priced at $1,033.33 for the work of counting (No count produced — office could not locate a record; underlying data granted subject to segregation and priced at $1,033.33 with a $516.66 deposit, February 5, 2026)
• FOIA 26-28 — FOIA 26-28: A headcount of cases open when the prosecutor took office — denied, then priced at $1,653.33 on an 800-file baseline (Denied in part, granted in part — no record states the headcount, with a certificate of nonexistence; underlying data granted subject to segregation and priced at $1,653.33 with an $826.66 deposit, February 5, 2026)
• FOIA 26-22 — FOIA 26-22: A conviction rate the office says does not exist, priced at $9,548 (Denied — record does not exist; $9,548 quote for the underlying files, January 30, 2026)
• FOIA 26-21 — FOIA 26-21: A count of convictions the office says does not exist — then a quiet amendment that changed the number behind the bill (Denied as a compilation — no count produced; fee of $9,548.00 quoted for underlying files; amended response revised the volume figure without explanation, January 30, 2026)
• FOIA 26-20 — FOIA 26-20: The aggregate case total, and the records that would let you count it (Denied — record does not exist, January 30, 2026)
• FOIA 25-279 — FOIA 25-279: The office granted the personnel and budget records on paper — then sent three invoices totaling $34,673.79 and none of the records (Granted in part on paper — dozens of records listed as enclosed and none enclosed; three cost itemizations totaling $34,673.79, November 25, 2025)
• FOIA 25-278 — FOIA 25-278: The office says it never tracked plea bargaining — then bills $23,146.66 for a 4,000-file review it says is already covered by another invoice (Granted in part — 62 trials produced from the calendar; plea-offer data certified not to exist; a $23,146.66 estimate the office says is moot if the twin invoice is paid, November 25, 2025)
• FOIA 25-277 — FOIA 25-277: No annual statistical report exists, the underlying data does, and the office prices it at $34,720 (Granted in part — no statistical report exists; the underlying data is granted at a $34,720 estimate built on a volume figure the office has never counted, November 25, 2025)
• FOIA 25-257 — FOIA 25-257: Three certificates of nonexistence, then a $19,840 bill to rebuild the data by hand (Denied — three certificates of nonexistence, with a $19,840 estimate to rebuild the same data by hand, October 31, 2025)
• FOIA 25-254 — FOIA 25-254: Two certificates of nonexistence, two documents produced, and a $74,520 itemization copied from an earlier request (Granted in part, denied in part — two documents produced, two certificates of nonexistence, and a $74,520 estimate identical to FOIA 25-244's, October 31, 2025)
• FOIA 25-244 — FOIA 25-244: Ten service slips, thirteen policy manuals, and a $74,520 quote (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-241 — FOIA 25-241: The special-prosecutor petition the office filed, and the 2024 memo that says it did not need another one (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-240 — FOIA 25-240: Officer use-of-force referrals, and the $1,863 bill for the one part the office would search (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-239 — FOIA 25-239: The Brady/Giglio list and how the office tracks officer credibility (Granted in part, denied in part, October 10, 2025)
• FOIA 25-234 — FOIA 25-234: Four lab reports, two certificates, and 26.4 grams where the press said four ounces (Granted in part, October 1, 2025)
• FOIA 25-202 — FOIA 25-202: No RFP, no bid, no purchase order — and the emails that show how the system was picked (Granted in part, August 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-201 — FOIA 25-201: ProsecutorByKarpel contracts, invoices, and licensing (Granted in part, denied in part, August 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-200 — FOIA 25-200: The software the office runs on — seven systems named, one of them retired in June 2024 (Granted in full, August 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-197 — FOIA 25-197: A request for complaints against the office came back as the office's own civil-rights lawsuits (Granted in part, denied in part, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-196 — FOIA 25-196: Audits of the office, 2019 through 2024 — five county financial statements produced, two fiscal years missing (Granted in part — five annual county financial statements produced; fiscal years 2022 and 2024 absent from the release; no exemption cited and no certificate of nonexistence, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-195 — FOIA 25-195: Reports on the office's own work — four case-tracking reports produced, performance reviews certified nonexistent, county reports withheld as attorney-client (Granted in part and denied in part — ten documents produced; county reports withheld on attorney-client privilege; performance reviews certified nonexistent; $5,961.60 estimated, $2,980.80 deposit, 270 days, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-194 — FOIA 25-194: Every email and text the Prosecutor sent in 2024 — a $63,028.80 estimate on a request the requester offered to narrow (Granted in part and denied in part — exemptions cited; $63,028.80 estimated, $31,514.40 deposit required, 270 days, August 13, 2025)
• FOIA 25-215 — FOIA 25-215: Three answers to one request — two certificates of nonexistence, a grant, and a $13,248 estimate (Granted in part, August 9, 2025)
• FOIA 25-180 — FOIA 25-180: Two boxes checked — the trial records both “already provided” and “do not exist” (Denied in full — certificate of nonexistence plus an exemption box checked; no fee, no pages produced, August 2, 2025)
• FOIA 25-139 — FOIA 25-139: Forfeitures in cases that ended without a conviction, certified not to exist — while the same office took an extension for the volume of records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-137 — FOIA 25-137: The average time from charge to disposition, certified not to exist — after a ten-day extension for “voluminous” records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-136 — FOIA 25-136: The plea-agreement count the office certified does not exist — after taking an extension for the volume of records (Denied in full — certified that the record does not exist; no fee quoted, no pages produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-135 — FOIA 25-135: The office denied the 2024 trial summary as a record that “does not exist” — then produced eight case files on the next page (Granted in part — 8 case files produced, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-133 — FOIA 25-133: The office certified the monthly count did not exist — then attached an annual one and offered to sell the underlying data for $2,815.20 (Granted in part — one annual screening table produced; monthly counts withheld; $2,815.20 quoted with a $1,407.60 deposit, June 27, 2025)
• FOIA 25-129 — FOIA 25-129: Arraignment-to-disposition times the office certified do not exist, then priced at $2,931.12 (Granted in part — two items denied as nonexistent; $2,931.12 quote on the third, June 26, 2025)
• FOIA 25-118 — FOIA 25-118: Final case outcomes for January and February 2025 (Fee estimate issued, June 18, 2025)
• FOIA 25-94 — Prosecutor Case Outcome Statistics, 2021–2025 (Granted in Part, May 23, 2025)