FOIA 26-33: Asked to count deferred prosecution agreements, the office certified the total nonexistent and priced the underlying data at $9,093.33

Watchdog Alerts

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

1. The office certified the total nonexistent and conceded the data exists in the same letter. It wrote that no record documents an “aggregate” or a “total number” and that producing one “would require the creation of a new record,” then wrote that “the underlying data exists to allow for the calculation” and offered it for $9,093.33.
2. The letter names the deferral statutes — MCL 771.1, MCL 769.4a, MCL 333.7411 and MCL 762.11 — that its sibling request needed and did not get. 26-34, faxed to the same office two minutes later and answered the same day by the same coordinator, certified that “There are no other ‘diversion programs’ within Delta County.” The two letters cannot both be right.
3. The itemization charges 586.66 fifteen-minute increments on a form that instructs the coordinator, twice, that “all partial time increments must be rounded down.” Rounded down, the line is $3,633.20, not $3,637.33.
4. The public-interest fee waiver is left blank: the section is present, both boxes are unmarked, and the after-waiver subtotal is empty. The request asked for a waiver under MCL 15.234.
5. The packet carries two different arrival dates for one fax. The office's own fax notification logs it at 1:16:12 p.m. on February 9, 2026; the Denial Form and the itemization both record “Date Received 02/10/2026.”
6. The production estimate is 270 days from receipt of the deposit — roughly nine months — for a count the office says the data already supports.

Timing caveat. Nothing on this page faults the office for adopting ProsecutorByKarpel in June 2024 or for the migration being difficult. The denial in 26-33 turns on MCL 15.233(4) and the absence of a pre-existing aggregate document, and the volume figure the itemization prices — 1,100 files a year — is taken here at face value. The page notes only that the same figure appears in other itemizations for other years and other requests, which is a question about the number, not about the software.

On February 9, 2026, a requester faxed the Delta County Prosecutor's Office a one-page request for a single number: the total number of deferred prosecution agreements entered between 2022 and 2025. The office's own fax service logged the transmission at 1:16:12 p.m. Three minutes later an e-mail supplied the date range the request had left out. The office answered on February 17, 2026, and it did something more interesting than deny. It split the request in two. The request for an existing record stating the total was denied, because no such record is maintained and producing one “would require the creation of a new record.” The request for the underlying data was granted, because “the underlying data exists to allow for the calculation” — at a quoted cost of $9,093.33, a $4,546.66 deposit, and an estimated 270 days to produce.

That is a legitimate way to answer a records request, and on the narrow question of whether the office must create a document it does not keep, the office is on solid ground. What makes the file worth reading is everything around that concession: a fee itemization that charges a fraction of a billing increment its own form forbids, a public-interest waiver left blank, and a list of four deferral statutes that the office's sibling response, faxed two minutes later and answered the same day by the same coordinator, said did not apply in Delta County. The total does not exist. The data behind it does. And the price of assembling it is nine thousand dollars.

Summary

Three numbers organise this file. One is the number of pages faxed, at 1:16:12 p.m. on February 9, 2026, according to the office's own fax notification. Zero is the number of responsive records produced, because nothing was paid and nothing was compiled. Nine thousand ninety-three dollars and thirty-three cents is what the office said it would cost to produce the underlying data so that the requester could compile the total himself.

The third number is where the file becomes useful. The itemization is not a round guess. It is built from a stated volume — “approximately 1,100 files per year” across 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 — a stated rate of three minutes per file to locate and two minutes per file to redact, and a stated wage of $24.82 an hour with fringe. Multiply it out and the arithmetic is almost exact: 4,400 files at three minutes is 13,200 minutes, or 880 fifteen-minute increments, at $6.20 each, for $5,456.00. Four thousand four hundred files at two minutes is 8,800 minutes, or 586.67 increments, at $6.20 each, for $3,637.33. The two lines add to $9,093.33, and half of that is the $4,546.66 deposit.

Almost exact, because of one line. The redaction charge uses 586.66 increments — a fraction of an increment — on a form that instructs the coordinator twice, in the instructions and again in the box where the number is entered, that “all partial time increments must be rounded down.” Rounded down, 586 increments at $6.20 is $3,633.20, not $3,637.33. The difference is $4.13. It is trivial in itself, and it is the only arithmetic slip on the page. What it shows is not a scheme but a habit: the rule the county publishes is not quite the rule the county applies, and the gap runs, however slightly, in the county's favour.

What was requested

The request is headed “Request for Aggregate Criminal Case Statistics” and asks for one line of data: the “Total number of deferred prosecution agreements entered,” in “Aggregate numerical data only.” It contains the sentence this archive has now seen in request after request: “If no such calculation is maintained, please indicate that no responsive record exists. This request does not require creation of a new record.” It asks for “a waiver of all fees pursuant to MCL 15.234,” for a detailed written estimate if any fee is anticipated, and for a response within five business days under MCL 15.235(2).

The date range was supplied separately. The forwarded e-mail in the packet, sent at 1:19 p.m. Eastern on February 9 and passed to the coordinator at 1:22 p.m., reads: “I sent in two FOIA requests but realized I didn't put the dates that I am requesting. If I need to send a new one, please advise, if not the dates requested are from 2022-2025.” The office quotes that e-mail in full in its response letter, so there is no dispute that it was received and understood.

What the office answered

The letter is candid about the vocabulary problem, and it should be credited for that. Rather than deny on a definition and stop, it explains the definition it is using and then prices the work of answering the question underneath it:

“In reviewing the request, in particular the use of ‘deferred prosecution agreements’, it should be noted that ‘deferred prosecution agreements’ is not typically used under the traditional definition in the Delta County Prosecutor's Office. A ‘deferred prosecution agreement’ would traditionally delay or defer the actual prosecution of the individual. It is believed that the request is meant to reflect cases that involved a Deferred or Delayed Sentence agreement, which are outlined and defined by several statutory provisions (MCL 771.1, MCL 769.4a, MCL 333.7411, and/or MCL 762.11). This request is not interpreted to include cases where the Court unilaterally places the individual on a deferred or delayed sentence, as the Court has discretion to do under MCL 333.7411, MCL 762.11, or MCL 771.1. Should any of these assumptions be incorrect, please provide clarification and this will be reviewed.”

Then the operative split: “Your request is GRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PART.” The denial is narrow and, on its own terms, correct. “A review of the records in the possession and maintained by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office reveals no record that currently documents an ‘aggregate’ or a ‘total number’. A record or document stating the ‘total number of deferred prosecution agreements’ would require the creation of a new record.” The undersigned 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.” The attached Notice of Denial, dated 02/17/2026, checks box 2, “Record Does Not Exist.” Boxes 1 and 3 are unmarked.

The grant is the same letter's second half. “In GRANTING your request, the underlying data exists to allow for the calculation of the ‘aggregate’ or ‘total number’ as requested. However, your request for ‘aggregate numerical total’ could be provided in the form of the underlying information that would allow for your own compiling of the ‘aggregate numerical total’ you have requested.” Because the estimate exceeds fifty dollars, the office requires a fifty percent deposit and estimates 270 days from receipt of the deposit to produce the records.

A denial of the document, a grant of the data

Most denials in this archive are answered by a certificate that stands alone. This one is different, and the difference is worth naming precisely. The office did not say the number is unknowable. It said the document does not exist, while the data does. That is a distinction the Act itself draws. MCL 15.233(4) provides that a public body is not required to make a new record in order to respond to a request, and a request for a compiled total is, in the statute's terms, a request for a record that has not yet been made.

So the denial is legally clean, and this page does not pretend otherwise. The request even anticipated it: “This request does not require creation of a new record.” The office read that sentence, agreed with it, and denied the aggregate. Then it did the harder thing and offered the alternative — the raw data, from which the requester could build the total. Whether that alternative is a real remedy or a formality is the question the rest of the file turns on, and the answer is mostly about money.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: Michigan law recognises several post-charge dispositions that defer or delay sentencing without entering a conviction in the ordinary sense, and the letter names four of them: MCL 771.1 (delayed sentence), MCL 769.4a (domestic-violence deferral), MCL 333.7411 (controlled-substance deferral), and MCL 762.11 (Holmes Youthful Trainee Act). The letter's careful distinction — that it counts agreements the office is party to, and not cases where “the Court unilaterally places the individual on a deferred or delayed sentence” — is a genuine attempt to define the population of records before pricing the search. That is more rigour than most itemizations in this archive show, and it is the right way to scope a request. The open question is not whether the definition is thoughtful. It is whether the office, having defined the population, can search for it at a price the public can actually pay.

The arithmetic of $9,093.33

The itemization is a six-page county form, and it is more legible than most. Every line can be checked. The table below reconstructs it from the numbers printed on the form.

FOIA 26-33 detailed cost itemization, as stated on the form

Line	Basis stated on the form	Amount
1. Labor to locate	1,100 files/year × 4 years = 4,400 files; 3 min/file = 13,200 min = 880 increments × $6.20	$5,456.00
2. Labor to copy	No charge stated	$0.00
3a. Labor to redact	4,400 files; 2 min/file = 8,800 min = 586.67 increments × $6.20 (form enters 586.66)	$3,637.33
3b. Contracted redaction	Not used	$0.00
4. Copying / duplication	Not used	$0.00
5. Mailing	Not used	$0.00
Subtotal fees	Sum of lines 1–5	$9,093.33
Public-interest waiver	Both boxes unmarked; “Subtotal Fees After Waiver” blank	undetermined
Indigence / nonprofit discount	Both boxes unmarked	undetermined
Deposit required (50%)	Half of the subtotal, before any waiver	$4,546.66
Estimated time to produce	“270 days from receipt of the deposit”	270 days

The volume figure is the load-bearing number, and it is worth stating plainly what it implies. One thousand one hundred files a year across four years is 4,400 separate case files, each of which must be opened, searched for a deferred-sentence disposition, and then redacted for “information of a personal nature that could clearly constitute a violation of an individual's privacy” before any of it is released. The form says the redaction applies to names, addresses, dates of birth and other identifying information of defendants, witnesses and victims. That is the work the $3,637.33 buys.

Now the fraction. The form's own instructions, printed twice on the redaction page, read: “These costs will be estimated and charged in 15-minute time increments; all partial time increments must be rounded down.” The box beside them repeats it: “divide by 15-minute increments, and round down.” Eight thousand eight hundred minutes divided by fifteen is 586.67. Rounded down, that is 586. Five hundred eighty-six increments at $6.20 is $3,633.20. The form charges $3,637.33, which is the un-rounded figure. The county's own rule, applied to the county's own numbers, produces a total of $9,089.20 rather than $9,093.33.

This page is not going to make a federal case of $4.13. It is going to make a point about what $4.13 represents. The itemization is a document whose entire function is to be arithmetically correct and to follow the county's published method. It is correct to the cent on four of its five cost lines. On the fifth it uses a fraction the form forbids, in the direction that adds money, and nobody caught it before it was mailed. If the increment rule is not applied when the numbers are this simple, a requester has no way to know it is applied anywhere else.

Two minutes apart, two versions of the same statutes

FOIA 26-33 did not arrive alone. It arrived with FOIA 26-34, which asked how many criminal cases were resolved through diversion programs between 2022 and 2025. The two requests were faxed to the same office on the same afternoon — 26-33 at 1:16:12 p.m., 26-34 minutes later — logged by the same fax service, clarified in the same e-mail, and answered on the same day, February 17, 2026, by the same coordinator.

Read side by side, the two letters describe the same legal landscape in two different ways. 26-33 names four deferral statutes — MCL 771.1, MCL 769.4a, MCL 333.7411 and MCL 762.11 — treats deferred and delayed sentence agreements as a real category in the office's files, and prices a search across 4,400 files to find them. 26-34 defines “diversion programs” as juvenile diversion administered by the Probate Court under the Juvenile Diversion Act, MCL 722.821, and states flatly: “There are no other ‘diversion programs’ within Delta County.”

Both letters can be defended, and this page will try to be fair about how. The word “diversion” in 26-34 is narrower than “deferred sentence” in 26-33. A deferred sentence under MCL 771.1 is not necessarily a “program”; it can be a disposition a judge imposes case by case. So 26-34's claim that there is no diversion programme other than juvenile diversion is not, strictly, contradicted by 26-33's recognition that deferred-sentence agreements exist. The two letters are answering different questions with different vocabularies, and a careful reader can hold both as true.

What a careful reader cannot do is reconcile the practical effect. In 26-34, the office said the category of record the requester wanted does not exist in Delta County and denied outright, at no cost. In 26-33, the same office, the same day, acknowledged that deferred-sentence cases under four statutes are a real population it can search, and quoted $9,093.33 to do it. The first letter tells the public there is nothing to find. The second tells the public there is something to find and it will cost nine thousand dollars to look. Both cannot be the whole picture, and the public has no way to see which letter is closer to it, because neither letter describes the search that produced its conclusion.

The waiver that was never decided

The request asked for “a waiver of all fees pursuant to MCL 15.234.” The itemization contains a “Waiver: Public Interest” section, which recites the statutory standard: a fee may be waived or reduced “if the County determines that a waiver or reduction of the fee is in the public interest because searching for or furnishing copies of the public record can be considered as primarily benefiting the general public.” Beneath it are two checkboxes — “All fees are waived” and “All fees are reduced by __%” — and both are unmarked. The line for “Subtotal Fees After Waiver” is blank.

So the waiver was not granted and not denied. It was not decided. And because the office required the full deposit before producing anything, the undecided waiver had a real cost: the requester could not obtain a single page without first paying $4,546.66, even though the statute the office itself quotes makes the waiver available precisely for requests like this one — a request for aggregate statistics about how a public office disposes of criminal cases, which is hard to describe as anything other than a benefit to the general public.

This is the same silence the Wickman Record tracks as Pattern 07 across the archive: the waiver section is printed, the boxes are left blank, and the deposit is calculated on the pre-waiver subtotal. In 26-34 the silence cost nothing, because the request was denied. Here it costs $4,546.66 up front, which is the difference between a request a person can afford to pursue and one they cannot.

The timeline

FOIA 26-33, dated

Date	Event	Source
February 9, 2026, 1:16:12 p.m.	Request faxed; one page received on the office's fax line	Request form; IPFone notification
February 9, 2026, 1:19 p.m.	Clarification e-mail sent, supplying the 2022–2025 date range	Forwarded e-mail
February 9, 2026, 1:22 p.m.	Administrator forwards the clarification to the coordinator, the prosecutor and staff; “Tracy has not yet assigned a number”	Forwarded e-mail
February 10, 2026	Date the office records the request as received	Response letter; Denial Form; Itemization
February 16, 2026	State holiday; not a business day	Calendar
February 17, 2026	Response letter, Notice of Denial and Detailed Cost Itemization dated; request granted in part and denied in part; box 2 checked	Response letter; Denial Form; Itemization

The dates here are consistent, and that is worth saying because they were not in the sibling file. The letter states the request was “dated February 9, 2026, and received by the Delta County Prosecutor's Office on February 10, 2026.” The Denial Form records “Date Received: 02/10/2026,” and the itemization repeats it. February 9 on the form and the fax log, February 10 as the receipt date, February 17 as the response — one fax, and the office's own packet agrees with itself. Counted from February 10 and excluding the weekend and the February 16 holiday, February 17 is the fifth business day. The response is timely, and this page records that without qualification.

What the record shows

The split answer is legally defensible and unusually candid. The office did not claim the number was secret. It said the compiled document does not exist, which MCL 15.233(4) permits it to say, and then conceded that the underlying data does. That is a more honest answer than a bare certificate, and it names the four statutes it is using to define the population of records.

The alternative it offered is priced out of reach. The grant is real in principle and unusable in practice. Nine thousand dollars, a four-and-a-half-thousand-dollar deposit and 270 days is not a path to a public statistic; it is a path most requesters will not take. A grant that no ordinary requester can afford functions, in the end, like a denial with better manners.

The itemization breaks its own rounding rule. The redaction line charges 586.66 increments on a form that twice instructs the coordinator to round partial increments down. Rounded down, the line is $3,633.20, not $3,637.33. The error is $4.13, and it runs in the county's favour.

The public-interest waiver was never decided. The section is printed, the standard is quoted, both boxes are blank, and the deposit is calculated on the pre-waiver total. A request for aggregate statistics about criminal dispositions is a textbook candidate for the waiver the office declined to rule on.

The two letters describe the same statutes differently. 26-33 names four deferral provisions and prices a search for them; 26-34, faxed two minutes later and answered the same day by the same coordinator, says no diversion programme other than juvenile diversion exists in Delta County. Each letter is defensible on its own vocabulary. Together they leave the public unable to tell whether there is something to find or nothing, and the office has not described the search behind either conclusion.

Nine thousand dollars is also an answer

There is a way to read this file that makes the office look good, and it is not wrong. A requester asked for a number the office does not keep. The office could have sent a one-line certificate and been done. Instead it read the request carefully, noticed that “deferred prosecution agreement” is not the phrase the office uses, guessed what the requester probably meant, named the four statutes that define it, drew a sensible line between agreements the office is party to and dispositions a judge imposes alone, and then — having scoped the work honestly — told the requester exactly what the work would cost and offered to do it. That is closer to good FOIA practice than most of this archive. It is transparent about method, it invites correction, and it does not pretend the data is secret when it is not.

And yet. A grant conditioned on $9,093.33 and a 270-day wait is a grant only in the sense that a door left unlocked behind a locked gate is an exit. The number the requester wanted is a count of how often the prosecutor's office resolves a case without a conviction — a statistic that bears directly on how the office uses its charging power. The office says the data to compute it exists. It says the computation would take 4,400 file reviews. And it prices the review at a figure that, for an individual, is roughly a used car. The requester did not ask for 4,400 files. He asked for one number. The office's answer was to hand him the haystack and bill him for the search.

That is the quiet move this file documents, and it is subtler than a denial. A denial can be appealed, and an appeal can be won. A fee can be appealed too, under MCL 15.240a, but only by someone willing to pay the deposit first or fight about it. Most people, faced with a $4,546.66 deposit and a 270-day estimate for a single statistic, will simply stop. The office knows this. It is not required to make its records cheap, and the Act lets it recover the actual cost of a genuinely large search. But the Act also gives it a public-interest waiver for exactly this kind of request, and the office left that box blank. The one tool the statute provides for making a costly-but-public-spirited request affordable was printed on the form, quoted in full, and not used.

Then there is the sibling. Two minutes after this request arrived, another one did, asking how many cases were resolved through diversion. The office answered that one by saying diversion means juvenile diversion, and there is no other diversion in Delta County. It answered this one by naming four deferral statutes and offering to search 4,400 files for them. The same coordinator wrote both letters on the same day. One says the category does not exist; the other says it exists and costs nine thousand dollars. A member of the public reading both would be entitled to ask a simple question: which is it? The office has the answer. It has not written it down where anyone can see it.

None of this requires bad faith to explain. It requires only the ordinary friction of a small county office answering statistical requests with a form built for document requests, applying a rounding rule by hand, and leaving a discretionary waiver to a coordinator who has 270 days of other work. The result, though, is a public record that is technically open and practically closed. The total does not exist. The data behind it does. And the price of turning one into the other is set, apparently, at the point where asking stops.

What this record does not show

This page does not show that the office was legally required to compile the total. MCL 15.233(4) says a public body need not make a new record, and a compiled aggregate is a new record. The denial of the aggregate is lawful on its face, and the request itself conceded the point.

It does not show that the fee is unlawful. The Act permits a public body to charge for the actual cost of a large search, and 4,400 file reviews at the stated rates is a genuinely large search. The $4.13 rounding error is a documentation defect, not evidence that the fee as a whole is improper.

It does not show that the office operates any particular deferral programme. The letter defines a population of records to search; it does not say how many cases fall within it, and nothing in the packet discloses a count.

It does not show that the two sibling letters are contradictory in law. “Diversion programme” and “deferred sentence agreement” are different phrases, and the office may be using each correctly. What the record shows is that the two answers leave the public unable to tell whether the underlying cases exist, and that neither letter describes the search that would settle it.

It does not show that the waiver should have been granted. The public-interest standard is discretionary, and this page takes no position on how the county should have exercised it — only that it did not exercise it at all.

What to ask next

The first follow-up is to remove the cost from the equation by narrowing the request to what the office can produce cheaply. Instead of the underlying data for 4,400 files, ask for the count of deferred-sentence dispositions in a single year, or for the docket entries showing dispositions under MCL 771.1, 769.4a, 333.7411 and 762.11 in one calendar year. A smaller population is a smaller search, and a smaller search is a fee a person can actually pay.

The second is to ask the office to decide the waiver. The request asked for it under MCL 15.234 and the itemization left it blank. A short letter asking for a written determination on the public-interest waiver — granted, reduced or denied, with reasons — puts the office to a decision it has so far avoided, and it is the decision most likely to make the difference between a request that proceeds and one that does not.

The third is to ask the office to reconcile its two letters. Ask, in one request, whether Delta County recognises deferred-sentence dispositions under MCL 771.1, 769.4a, 333.7411 and 762.11 as a category of case, and if so, how many such dispositions occurred in a given year. The answer would resolve the tension between 26-33 and 26-34 without requiring either letter to be wrong.

The fourth is smaller and applies to the whole archive. Ask the office to confirm, in writing, that its published rounding rule — partial increments rounded down — is the rule it applies to every itemization, and to correct the redaction line in 26-33 to $3,633.20 if it agrees. A four-dollar correction is a small thing to ask. The answer would tell the public whether the rule is real.

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.; MCL 15.233(4) (a public body is not required to make a new record, the authority for denying the compiled aggregate); MCL 15.234 (fees, deposits, and the public-interest waiver and reductions invoked by the request and left undetermined); MCL 15.235(2) (five-business-day response period, cited by the request); MCL 15.240 (appeal to the chairperson of the county board of commissioners or judicial review in circuit court, as stated in the response letter, together with the statutory note that a prevailing requester may recover attorney fees, costs and disbursements, actual or compensatory damages, and punitive damages of $1,000.00); MCL 15.240a (a requester may challenge a fee the requester believes exceeds the amount permitted by the Act).

Deferral and delayed-sentence provisions named by the office: MCL 771.1 (delayed sentence); MCL 769.4a (domestic-violence deferral); MCL 333.7411 (controlled-substance deferral); MCL 762.11 et seq. (Holmes Youthful Trainee Act). Juvenile Diversion Act, Act 13 of 1988, MCL 722.821 et seq., cited in the sibling response 26-34.

Documents relied on: the February 17, 2026 response letter (two pages); the Notice of Denial form dated 02/17/2026; the six-page Detailed Cost Itemization dated 02/17/2026; the excerpt of MCL 15.240; the blank Denial Appeal Form; the county's FOIA policy notice; the IPFone fax notification recording one page at 1:16:12 p.m. on February 9, 2026; the request form dated February 9, 2026; and the forwarded clarification e-mail. All eighteen pages are published below with the requester's identifying information redacted.

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 26-32 — 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 25-134 — FOIA 25-134: The dismissed-case 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 25-133 — 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)