This is a sad but true black comedy of a black-hearted man named Blackburn and the blackguards of our local justice system.  It features no valiant heroes, only villains; it has no victors, only victims.  If you need some yang with your yin, this tale will only trouble you.

Brian Blackburn 2014 Villain

In April of 2014, Scottville teacher Scott Dumas was heading out of the local Shop & Save back to his car, at the same time an allegedly impaired Brian Blackburn was recklessly speeding through that same lot and blindsided Dumas.  Witnesses saw Dumas' body hurl onto the windshield and over the speeding car, landing on his head many feet away, they also saw the car speed away without stopping.  

Dumas was lucky he wasn't killed, and lucky that the hit and run driver wasn't skilled and was quickly apprehended at his Ludington address due to the help of these and other witnesses.  Blackburn readily admitted he was quite impaired, and apparently did not surrender that easy as he had a resisting charge tacked on.  In September 2014, Brian Blackburn after pleading 'no contest' was sentenced to prison with the following charges and their minimum sentences.


Police Officer - Assault/Resist/Obstruct   Min Sentence: 1 year 4 months

Fail to Stop-Scene Accident Result Serious Impairment/Death  Min Sentence: 2 years 6 months

Operating While Intoxicated Causing Serious Injury  Min Sentence:  2 years 6 months

Maximum sentences were two, five and five years respectively.  The sentence range between minimum and maximum was 6 years 4 months to 12 years.  The Department of Corrections confirms these numbers.  If he had sat in jail every day since he had been apprehended on April 17, 2014, the minimum sentence would have him be out on August 17, 2020.

Yet the MDOC link also notes that he was released on October 12, 2018, nearly two years before his minimum time was up.   This man knowingly drove while impaired, knowingly drove away from a serious accident he caused, and resisted/assaulted police officers trying to arrest him for those heinous acts.  That villainy earned him punishment that our criminal justice system imposed, but then that system failed us all by letting him out two years before the supposedly minimum amount of time could be served without any rationale for doing so.  

An unjustified early release before sentencing minimums is as much a failure in the justice system's duties to society as Brian Blackburn's driving was in his obligations to the community on that April 2014 day.  One could say their non-incarceration of Blackburn led to this current problem in 2019, which could become an even bigger problem depending on the facts.

Brian Blackburn 2019 Victim?

Blackburn was being driven by his significant other in a car out on US 10 in front of the Ludington Wal-mart on Monday January 28, 2019, roughly 100 days after he was released from prison and put on probation.  According to the Mason County Press on 2-1-2019:

“Following a 911 call, responding deputies located a vehicle parked in the roadway and learned [Blackburn] had removed the keys from the vehicle while the female driver was operating the vehicle westbound on US 10. [Blackburn] was arrested for reckless driving and domestic violence. The subject refused (to be) patted down and struggled with deputies during the booking procedure,” ” [Mason County Sheriff Kim] Cole said.

This information was confirmed in other local news sources at the time and never disputed or supplemented.  It should be troubling for some to read when they consider:

1.  Is a passenger removing the keys from a vehicle's ignition an act of reckless driving?  That charge requires the person so charged to be operating (i.e. in control of) the vehicle.  This was not an act of operating, but of disabling the operation.

2.  What was the act of domestic violence he was charged with?  Is simply taking the keys and not giving them back considered an act of violence, isn't it more of an act of petty larceny?  

3.  If Blackburn 'struggled with deputies during the booking procedure' of the above two crimes that seem specious, was it due to the crimes he was accused of were unfounded?  The booking process begins once the subject goes to the jail; he is first told of the crimes he has committed and then a mug shot is taken.  

One can tell from Blackburn's recent mugshot (left) that he seems to have been the victim of a violent assault before that photo was taken.  That was never mentioned in passing, nor were damages that the deputies sustained from Blackburn's struggle specified or documented.  

So Blackburn was told he had engaged in operating a vehicle he didn't operate, was told he had assaulted his significant other when no assault is alleged (the charge would be thrown out later), and was told he had assaulted/resisted deputies in the booking process when he alone bears the scars of violence. 

Were the deputies treating him the same as if he was the county administrator?  Or were they working hard to get Blackburn back to where he should have been all along:  lodged in a correctional facility under whatever law seemed relevant at the time to show he was in violation of his probationary terms?

Sometime between the January 28 incident and May 14th, the story appears to have changed, or else it's relation by the circuit court judge, as related in the local paper:

Grabbing the steering wheel has been found by the Michigan Supreme Court (in People v Yamat (2006)) to be an act of operation, there doesn't seem to be any case on record of any court determining whether the act of taking keys from the ignition is.  You cannot actually take keys out of modern cars while they are in operation, they are locked in until you place the car in park position.  Again, nothing in the publicly available record suggests Blackburn shifted the car into 'park' and the judge's assertion seems to contradict the earlier 'criminal conduct' noted by the sheriff. 

For the three 'serious' crimes imposed against Blackburn in 2019, the end result was for him to be on probation until May 14, 2021, coincidentally, that would have been a few months after he should have been released from prison for the three more serious real crimes he committed back in 2014, had they been minimally imposed.  

As noted at the beginning, this black comedy of a black-hearted man named Blackburn and the blackguards of our local justice system is not replete with heroes, but features only villains and victims, the biggest being school teacher Scott Dumas and the Mason County community.

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If the reporting of the story is true it sounds like Blackburn got off easy again. He's destined for a lot of time in jail the way he is going. All I have to say is that the police are not going to be wrong all of the time and it may be that Blackburn is just a sleazebag. It seems that the judge would have taken into consideration any evidence included which may have been the woman in the car's story about how Blackburn acted. I don't think Blackburn is a victim, instead he is a perpetrator who has caused people a lot of pain.

I have done a little more investigation this morning, and as I stated earlier, I am by no means defending anything about what happened in 2014 with Blackburn, nor with the court at that point.

What does concern me is what happened in 2019 after his early release.  My initial findings is that the deputy involved with the stop was Matt Warmuskerken, who has a history of escalation (most notably, the McAdam traffic stop) and the MCSO's history of subtly encouraging such escalations, I have a feeling that the official story has changed subtly for some reason other than a new truth has been discovered.  I have another suspicion that the female involved in this situation may have changed her story, perhaps making some details up because they were arguing and he was on a strict probation.

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