The office's own rules
The office's own policies and its handling of public-records requests: FOIA procedures, fee schedules, records retention, and how denials, extensions and appeals are documented.
Asked for twelve monthly felony-authorization counts, the office conceded the data exists, refused the arithmetic, and blamed the requester's own cost-saving clause.
Asked for an eleven-field privilege log, the office produced nine document titles and a citation to MCL 15.243(9) — a subsection that does not exist.
Five paragraphs labelled “granted,” zero pages produced, and the prior production the office relies on contains no responsive documents at all — only $34,673.79 in invoices.
Asked to count January's pleas, the office read two courts' dockets and answered 52 in 85 minutes, free — eight days after certifying that the same kind of aggregate did not exist and quoting $1,653.33 to build one.
Asked to count diversion cases, the office did not search and shrug. It narrowed “diversion” to a Probate Court programme it does not run, certified the record did not exist, and put three different arrival dates on one fax.
Asked to count deferred prosecution agreements, the office certified that no such record exists — then conceded the underlying data does, and priced it at $9,093.33 with a $4,546.66 deposit and a 270-day estimate.
Asked for records on how the migration affects FOIA responses, the office partly denied the request — then produced three memos to the Board that say the data ‘did not transition completely, or accurately,’ the old system is gone, and a commissioner’s cheaper fix was declined because ‘we don’t have time.’
The office named eight responsive documents, produced none, and certified the number does not exist — while saying the number can be gleaned from the documents it will not hand over.
One number was requested. The office could not locate it, defined the key word itself, and then quoted $1,033.33 to let the requester count — on an invoice whose own arithmetic is $4.13 off.
How many cases were open the day the prosecutor took office? The office certified no record says. Then it priced the counting at $1,653.33 — on an 800-file baseline that its own companion letter, sent the same day, set at 500.
A count of convictions the office says does not exist, priced at $9,548. Then, seven days later, an amendment that quietly changed the volume figure behind the bill — and said nothing about why.
Forty-eight pages of GRANTED, and not one record enclosed. Instead: three cost itemizations totaling $34,673.79, an 8-employee office, a 6,000-file estimate, and an admission that two years of audits do not exist.
The office says it never kept plea-offer data, then bills $23,146.66 for a 4,000-file review its own footnote calls moot if the twin invoice is paid. The one thing it produced — 62 trials — it got from a calendar, not the files.
The office says no statistical report exists — then offers to compile the statistics for $34,720, using a case count it has never counted. Its own five-category backlog definition suggests the numbers are a query away.
Five years of plea and disposition data, denied three times as nonexistent — then priced at $19,840 to reconstruct by hand from 6,000 files the office's own database already indexes.
The office says it keeps no Brady/Giglio disclosure log — while its own 2024 policy orders six police agencies to report eight kinds of officer-credibility information to it. Then it quotes the same $74,520 it quoted seven weeks earlier.
Every Brady/Giglio statistic certified nonexistent. The policy manuals handed over free. And a $37,260 deposit demanded before anyone would look.
Certified: no RFP, no bid, no purchase order. Produced: the emails showing PAAM ran the procurement and Karpel won 52 of 66 county votes.
Seven systems named, versions and all, at no charge and with no exemption claimed. The only complete grant in the archive.
Two lawsuits produced, including a $60,000 settlement. Two categories certified as nonexistent, one refused under MCR 9.126, and no complaint log at all.
A six-year request for every audit of the prosecutor's office returned five county financial statements — and left out fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2024 without a word of explanation.
Every 2024 email and text, in four categories. The requester offered to take a log first. The office quoted 1,440 hours of work and a $31,514.40 deposit instead.
Denied as nonexistent. Denied again as nonexistent. Then granted — for $13,248 and a 180-day wait. What the office produced instead were the court's statistics, not its own.
