Illustration for FOIA 26-30: Eight documents, one number, and a door that closes twice
FOIA 26-30 · Denied — no aggregate total produced; eight responsive documents identified but not reproduced under a Densmore prior-production rationale; no fee quoted

On February 6, 2026, a requester faxed the Delta County Prosecutor's Office a one-page request for a single number: the total number of criminal cases initiated by the office from the prosecutor's election date through December 31, 2025. The office received it on February 9 and answered on February 12, 2026. In between, it found eight responsive documents — and then declined to produce any of them.

The answer is one of the more revealing documents in this archive, because it does two things at once that are difficult to do at once. It certifies that no record exists containing the requested total, and it concedes that the total can be calculated from eight named documents. It then refuses to reproduce those eight documents on the ground that they were already provided in two earlier requests, citing Densmore v. Department of Corrections. The public is therefore told, in a single letter, that the number does not exist as a record, that the number is derivable from records the office will not hand over again, and that the office has already given those records to this requester once.

How to read this page

Documented facts come from the released records and are dated and quoted. The agency's position is what the office asserted or did. Legal interpretation is analysis of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act, and is labeled as such. Open questions are issues the record does not resolve. Nothing on this page asserts that the denial was unlawful, that the office was obligated to create a statistic it does not maintain, or that anyone acted in bad faith. Where the record supports only a question, only a question is stated.

Summary

FOIA 26-30 is the fifth request in a cluster of statistical requests the office received within a week — 26-20, 26-21, 26-22, 26-29, and 26-30 — each asking for a different aggregate figure about the office's criminal work. This one asked for the number of criminal cases initiated in a three-year window. Unlike its siblings, it produced no fee estimate at all. The office did not price a search. It named eight documents, said it had already given them to this requester, and declined to give them again.

Four numbers organize this file. Eight is the number of responsive documents the office identified. Two is the number of prior requests it says already produced them. Zero is the number of pages it produced this time. And two is the number of documents in that list of eight that this archive cannot confirm was ever produced in either prior request — a point taken up below, because it is where the Densmore rationale is weakest.

The refusal is not frivolous. Densmore is real Michigan authority for the proposition that a public body need not answer a duplicate request absent an explanation of why the first copy did not suffice. If the office had in fact produced all eight documents in 25-94 and 25-195, the citation would be apt. The question this page examines is whether the record supports the premise, and what happens to the refusal when it does not.

What was requested

The request is dated February 6, 2026. It was transmitted by fax and reached the office on Monday, February 9, 2026; the office's own Notice of Denial records a received date of 02/09/2026, and the fax cover sheet in the packet carries a receive time of 2.6.2026 09:49:14 AM -05:00. The request is captioned “Request for Aggregate Criminal Case Statistics” and its operative text asks for:

“Total number of criminal cases initiated by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office from the prosecutor's election date through December 31, 2025.”

As in its sibling requests, the operative text is followed by two limiting sentences: the request seeks “aggregate numerical data only,” and “if no such calculation is maintained, please indicate that no responsive record exists. This request does not require creation of a new record.” The request is one sentence long. The answer is two pages plus a denial form.

The start date is fixed by reference to the prosecutor's election. The office resolved that reference itself, in a footnote identical to the one used in 26-21: “Please note that Prosecutor Wickman was elected in November 2022 General Election, and was sworn in for her term starting on January 1, 2023.” The body of the letter brackets the same date, reading the request as covering “from the prosecutor's election [January 01, 2023] through December 2025.” The effective window is therefore January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025 — three calendar years.

What the office answered

The February 12 letter makes four moves, and the sequence is the story.

First, it reports that it found records. “A review of existing records within the possession of or maintained by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office reveals that records that currently exist within its possession have located the following responsive records.” The sentence is ungrammatical, but its meaning is clear: the search succeeded. Eight documents are then listed by name and date range.

The eight responsive documents the office identified in FOIA 26-30
#Document named in the letterPeriod or date covered
121st Century ReportJanuary 1, 2024 to January 31, 2024
221st Century ReportJanuary 1, 2025 to July 3, 2025
3Warrants Authorized by AgencyJanuary 1, 2023 to November 30, 2023
4Budget Request for FY 2024-2025 Memo and attachmentsMemo dated 07/17/2024
5Budget Request for FY 2023-2024 Memo and attachmentsMemo dated 09/10/2023
6Charges on Authorized Misdemeanor Case Report01/01/2023 to 11/30/2023
7Charges on Authorized Felony Case Report01/01/2023 to 11/30/2023
8Charges on Authorized Felony Case Report01/01/2023 to 12/31/2023

Second, it refuses to produce them. “However, these documents have already been provided to you in response to FOIA Request 25-94 and FOIA Request 25-195. As you have not provided any justification or need for the documents to be reproduced to you, the public body will not be producing these records for a second time pursuant to Densmore v. Department of Corrections, 203 Mich 363 (1994).”

Third, it denies the aggregate and certifies nonexistence. “A review of existing records within the possession of or maintained by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office reveals that no document currently exists detailing the 'aggregate numerical total' of 'criminal cases initiated by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office from the prosecutor's election [January 01, 2023] through December 2025.' Specifically, the request would require the generation or creation of a new public record to fulfill the request. Such creation is not required under Michigan FOIA. MCL 15.233(5).” The letter then adds a certificate in the statutory form: “The undersigned hereby certifies that, after a search for records and to the best of the undersigned's knowledge and belief, the public record requested, and described above, does not exist within the records of the public body under the name nor any other name reasonably known to the public body.”

Fourth, it concedes the number is derivable. In the middle of that denial sits one sentence that undoes much of its force: “However, the 'aggregate numerical total' as requested can be gleaned from the previously provided documents.” The office is telling the requester that the answer is in the eight documents it has just declined to reproduce.

The Densmore refusal, and its premise

Densmore v. Department of Corrections, 203 Mich.App. 363, 512 N.W.2d 72 (1994), is a Michigan Court of Appeals decision from January 1994. In it, a prisoner sought a memorandum that the department had already furnished to him in response to an earlier request to a different custodian. The trial court inspected the document in camera, found it identical to the copy the prisoner already had, and dismissed the action. The Court of Appeals affirmed, reasoning by analogy to the court rule governing copies for indigent criminal defendants, which requires a showing of good cause where the requested materials have already been provided. The court held that a duplicate FOIA request need not be answered absent some explanation of why the first copy did not suffice — for example, that it was lost, stolen, or destroyed.

Two things follow from that holding, and both matter to this letter.

The first is that Densmore is a judicial construction, not statutory text. The Freedom of Information Act contains no duplicate-request exception. The Court of Appeals supplied one, reasoning that statutes should be construed to avoid absurd consequences. That is a legitimate exercise of appellate authority, and Michigan courts have followed it. But it is a judge-made rule, and it is narrower than it is sometimes applied: it rests on the premise that the requester already has the records. Where that premise fails, the rule has nothing to stand on.

The second is that the citation in the letter omits the reporter division. The office writes “203 Mich 363 (1994).” The case is reported at 203 Mich.App. 363, in the Court of Appeals reports, not the Michigan Reports. That is a small citation error, the kind that appears in a template and stays there. It does not change the substance of the argument. It is noted here because this archive has recorded the same pattern before: a template that is reused without being re-read.

Whether the premise holds

The Densmore refusal depends entirely on the assertion that all eight documents were “already provided” in 25-94 and 25-195. That assertion can be tested against this archive, because both of those requests are documented here with their released records.

Where each of the eight documents appears in the prior releases, on this archive's record
#Document25-94 (May 2025)25-195 (Aug 2025)
121st Century Report, Jan 2024Not in the release as describedNot in the release as described
221st Century Report, Jan–Jul 2025Not in the release as describedNot in the release as described
3Warrants Authorized by Agency, 2023Produced (2021–2023 reports)Produced (run date 11/30/2023)
4Budget Request FY 2024-2025 Memo—Produced
5Budget Request FY 2023-2024 Memo—Produced
6Charges on Authorized Misdemeanor, 2023—Produced
7Charges on Authorized Felony, 11/30/2023—Produced
8Charges on Authorized Felony, 12/31/2023—Produced

Six of the eight are accounted for. FOIA 25-195 produced ten documents and 71 pages, among them two budget memos to the Board of County Commissioners — dated 07/17/2024 and 09/10/2023, matching items 4 and 5 — and four Adult Case Tracking reports with run dates of 11/30/2023, matching items 3, 6, 7, and 8. The periods and the titles line up. On this archive's record, those six were in fact produced in 25-195.

The two 21st Century Reports are a different matter. FOIA 25-94, the May 2025 request for case-outcome statistics, produced three “Warrants Authorized by Agency” reports covering calendar years 2021, 2022, and 2023. It did not produce a 21st Century Report for 2024 or 2025; indeed, the Delta County Board of Commissioners' June 27, 2025 decision on the appeal of that response records that the office denied item 1 for 2024 and 2025, while confirming production for 2021 through 2023, and notes the prosecutor's stated intention to produce the 2024 and 2025 records later. FOIA 25-195, the August 2025 request, produced 2023-era case-tracking reports and the two budget memos. Neither release, as documented in this archive, included a 21st Century Report covering January 2024 or January through July 2025.

That does not prove the documents were never produced. They may have been furnished in a later request, in correspondence not in this archive, or outside the FOIA process. But it does mean the letter's flat assertion that all eight “have already been provided” in those two requests is not supported by the record this archive holds for those two requests — and for the two 21st Century Reports, the record affirmatively shows that the 2024 and 2025 periods were being denied in June 2025, not produced.

This is the sharpest point in the file. A duplicate-request refusal is only as good as its premise, and the premise here is a factual claim about what was produced before. If two of the eight documents were never produced, then for those two the Densmore ground does not apply, and the office's refusal rests on a citation that does not reach the facts. The requester asked for a total; the office said the total is derivable from eight documents; six of the eight he has, and two he may not.

The two positions in one letter

Set the two halves of the letter side by side and the tension becomes visible.

What the office says about the same number, in the same letter
Statement in the February 12 letterWhat it implies
“No document currently exists detailing the 'aggregate numerical total.'”The number is not recorded anywhere as a document.
“The request would require the generation or creation of a new public record.”Producing the number would mean making something that does not exist.
“The undersigned hereby certifies … that the public record requested … does not exist.”A formal certificate of nonexistence has been issued.
“The 'aggregate numerical total' as requested can be gleaned from the previously provided documents.”The number is derivable from records the office has already identified.
“These documents have already been provided to you … the public body will not be producing these records for a second time.”The underlying records exist and were produced before.

Each statement is defensible on its own. A total is not a document; a certificate of nonexistence speaks to documents, not to derivable facts; and a duplicate request may be declined under Densmore. But a reader who takes the letter as a whole is left with a puzzle. The office knows the records exist. It knows they contain the information. It says the number can be gleaned from them. And it declines to produce them, while certifying that the number itself does not exist. The public is told that the answer is in documents it cannot have, and that the answer is not a record at all.

There is a cleaner way the office could have written this letter, and it is worth naming because it shows the current version was a choice. It could have said: “We have identified eight documents responsive to your request. Six were produced to you in 25-195. Two were not, and we are producing them now. The aggregate total is not a record we maintain; you may calculate it from these documents.” That letter would have been shorter, would have answered the request, and would have been consistent with Densmore. The office did not write it.

The timeline

FOIA 26-30, from fax to answer
DateEventSource
February 6, 2026Request dated and faxedThe request as received
February 6, 2026, 9:49:14 a.m. EasternFax received; cover sheet records the transmissionFax cover sheet, page 4
February 9, 2026Office records receiptNotice of Denial, page 6
February 12, 2026Response letter and Notice of Denial issuedPages 1–2, 6

The response is timely. Under MCL 15.235(1), a public body must respond within five business days of receipt. Counting from Monday, February 9, the third business day is Thursday, February 12 — the day the office answered. No extension was taken and none was needed. This page does not suggest any timing violation, because on this record there is none.

One difference from its siblings is worth noting. FOIA 26-30 contains no fee itemization. There is no estimate, no deposit, no waiver section, and no time frame. The office did not price this request; it denied it. That is a cleaner posture than the priced denials in 26-21 and 26-29, and it means the dispute here is entirely about access, not about money.

What the record shows

The search succeeded. Unlike 26-29, where the office could not locate a record, here it located eight. That makes 26-30 a stronger response on the search dimension: the office knew what it had.

The refusal rests on a factual premise the record does not fully support. Six of the eight documents match what 25-195 produced. The two 21st Century Reports covering 2024 and 2025 do not appear in either prior release as documented here, and the Board's June 2025 decision records that the 2024 and 2025 periods were then being denied. A duplicate-request refusal cannot reach documents that were never produced.

The letter concedes derivability while certifying nonexistence. The office says the total “can be gleaned” from the eight documents and simultaneously certifies that no record of the total exists. Both may be technically true. Read together, they leave the public unable to obtain either the number or the records.

The citation is incomplete. Densmore is reported at 203 Mich.App. 363, not 203 Mich 363. The substance is unaffected; the care taken with the citation is of a piece with the rest of the template.

No fee was quoted. This is the one statistical request in the cluster that produced no invoice. It is a denial, not a priced denial, and the public should be able to see that difference.

Eight documents, one number, and a door that closes twice

The most striking thing about FOIA 26-30 is how close it comes to being a good answer. The office searched, found records, named them by title and date range, cited authority for declining to reproduce them, and certified what it did not have. A reader who stops after the first page could reasonably conclude that the office had done its job. The problems are all in the second page, and they are problems of coherence rather than of effort.

Consider what the requester is actually told. He is told that the number he wants is not a record. He is told that it can be calculated from eight documents. He is told that he already has those documents. And he is told that the office will not give them to him again. If all four statements were true, the request would be answered: he would have the documents, and he could do the arithmetic. The difficulty is the third statement. On this archive's record, he has six of the eight. The two he may not have are precisely the two covering the most recent period — 2024 and the first half of 2025 — which is the period a reader would most want, because it is the period closest to the present and least covered by the earlier releases.

That is not a technicality. Densmore exists to prevent a public body from being made to run the same copies through the machine twice for a requester who already has them. It is a rule about waste, and it is a sensible one. It is not a rule that lets an office assert, without checking, that everything in a new list was in an old production. When the assertion is wrong for two of eight documents, the refusal is wrong for two of eight documents, and the requester is left to discover the gap himself.

Then there is the deeper oddity, which is the certificate. The office certifies that the requested record does not exist “under the name nor any other name reasonably known to the public body.” That is the statutory language, and it is literally accurate: there is no document titled “Total Criminal Cases Initiated, 2023–2025.” But the same letter says the number can be gleaned from documents the office has. A certificate of nonexistence is a powerful instrument. It tells a requester, and a court, that the search is over. Issuing one in the same breath as a concession that the information is present in identifiable records risks using the certificate for something it was not designed to do — not to report the absence of a record, but to close a question the office would rather not answer in the form asked.

None of this requires a finding that the office acted in bad faith, and this page makes none. The likeliest explanation is the mundane one: a template, a list assembled from memory or from a prior file, and a citation added because it had been used before. That is how small offices operate under FOIA pressure, and it is not sinister. But the cumulative effect of a reused template is that the public stops being able to tell the difference between a considered refusal and a copied one. The 21st Century Reports are where that difference shows. If the office had checked its own prior productions before writing “already provided,” it would have found that two of the eight were not, and the letter would have been both shorter and true.

The request asked for one number. The office's answer names eight documents, refuses them all, certifies the number away, and concedes in passing that the number is there for the taking. A public body is entitled to decline a duplicate request. It is not entitled to describe a production as complete when the record shows it was not, and the difference between those two things is the whole of this file.

What this record does not show

This record does not show that the two 21st Century Reports were never produced. They may have been furnished in a later request, in correspondence outside this archive, or outside the FOIA process. What the record shows is narrower: they do not appear in the 25-94 or 25-195 releases as documented here, and the 2024 and 2025 periods were being denied in June 2025.

It does not show that the office maintains an aggregate total and is withholding it. The letter says it does not, and nothing in the packet contradicts that.

It does not show that the denial was unlawful. The no-duty-to-create provision at MCL 15.233(5) is real, and a total is a calculation rather than a document.

It does not show that the Densmore refusal was improper as a matter of law for the six documents that were in fact produced in 25-195. For those six, the citation fits the facts.

It does not show what the 21st Century Reports contain. If they were produced elsewhere, they are not in this archive, and their contents are unknown here.

What to ask next

The record suggests three follow-up requests, each narrow enough to be answered without a fee dispute.

The first would ask specifically for the two 21st Century Reports named in this letter — the report covering January 1, 2024 to January 31, 2024, and the report covering January 1, 2025 to July 3, 2025 — described by title and date range, with a request that the office state whether each was produced in 25-94, in 25-195, or in any other request, and if so in which. That is a request about the office's own production history, and it would settle the Densmore premise directly.

The second would ask for the office's written procedure for determining that a request is a duplicate of a prior request — how staff check prior productions, what record they consult, and who signs off. If a procedure exists, the public can see whether it was followed. If none exists, that is itself the finding.

The third would ask the office to state whether its case-management system can produce a count of cases initiated by year as a query, without creating a new record. That is the same system-capability question raised by 26-29, and it is the question that determines whether “no document exists” is a fact about the system or a choice about the search.

All three are catalogued in our internal working list, with the specific wording and the record that supports each one. They are not published here.

Authorities and sources cited on this page

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

Michigan Freedom of Information Act, MCL 15.231 et seq. The following provisions are cited above: MCL 15.233(1) (certification that a record does not exist); MCL 15.233(5) (no duty to create a compilation, summary, or new record); MCL 15.235 (response deadlines, including the five-business-day period in subsection (1)); and MCL 15.240 (appeals and civil actions).

Densmore v. Department of Corrections, 203 Mich.App. 363, 512 N.W.2d 72 (1994). A Michigan Court of Appeals decision holding that a duplicate FOIA request need not be answered absent an explanation of why the first copy did not suffice. The office's letter cites the case as “203 Mich 363 (1994),” omitting the “App.” division of the reporter. The holding is described above from the opinion itself, not from the office's characterization of it.

Documents in the packet. The response is thirteen pages: pages 1–2 the February 12 response letter; page 3 a Zimbra/IPFone fax notification; page 4 the fax cover sheet; page 5 the request as received; page 6 the Notice of Denial; page 7 an excerpt of MCL 15.240; page 8 a blank FOIA Appeal Form; page 9 a second excerpt of MCL 15.240; page 10 a FOIA Written Policies notice; pages 11–12 a duplicate fax notification and cover sheet; and page 13 a duplicate of the request as received.

Prior releases relied on for the production comparison. FOIA 25-94 (request dated May 23, 2025; response June 5, 2025; Board decision June 27, 2025) and FOIA 25-195 (request dated August 13, 2025; response September 3, 2025) are both documented in this archive with their released records. The comparison table above is drawn from those releases and from the Board's June 27, 2025 decision on the 25-94 appeal. It is a comparison against this archive's record, not a claim about what the office's files contain.

On the citation. The letter's reference was read at high resolution and confirmed to read “203 Mich 363 (1994).” The correct reporter citation is 203 Mich.App. 363, 512 N.W.2d 72 (1994). The omission of “App.” is recorded here as a citation error and nothing more; it does not affect the substance of the office's argument.

On the redactions. The requester's name, home address, telephone number, email address, and originating fax station identifier have been removed from every document published with this article, including both copies of the request as faxed, the response letter, the Notice of Denial form, and the fax notifications. No substantive content was removed. The office itself made no redactions in this production, because it produced no records.

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.

Response Letter (redacted) The February 12, 2026 cover letter: the list of eight responsive documents by title and date range, the Densmore prior-production refusal, the MCL 15.233(5) finding, the certificate of nonexistence, the statement that the total can be gleaned from the documents, and footnote 1 resolving the election date to January 1, 2023. Denial Form and Authorities (redacted) Five pages: the Notice of Denial for request 26-30 (received 02/09/2026, notice 02/12/2026), two reproductions of MCL 15.240, a blank FOIA Appeal Form, and the county’s FOIA written-policies notice. Request and Fax Record (redacted) Eleven pages: the IPFone fax notifications recording transmission at 9:49:14 a.m. Eastern on February 6, 2026, the request as received, and duplicate fax notifications, cover sheet, and request pages as transmitted.