Trailing the Appeal of Sean Phillips' Open Murder Dismissal

[XLFD]

 Always looking for a good headline for his re-election campaign, Bill Schuette's webpage proudly proclaimed that he and Mason County Prosecutor Spaniola Will Appeal Dismissal of Murder Charge Against Sean Phillips on September 15, 2014. 

And true to his word, his female representative, Donna Pendergast,  filed a Claim of Appeal of Right in the 51st Circuit Court of Honorable Judge Richard I. Cooper on September 24.  I went down to the county clerk to inspect the filings of this case 14-318 AR earlier today after clearing it with them via E-mail exchange. 

Court records differ from normal public records in that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not apply to them.  The judiciary is not subject to FOIA.  However, court records not specifically curtailed from public disclosure are generally fair game, and this is why you can often find most court filings available for a price. 

And they are made pricy here in Mason County.  By administrative order signed in 2010, Judge Cooper has made all non-exempt court records available at the rate of $1 a page for copies.  To circumvent this, I have in the past brought in my own scanner to make my own electronic copies.  But I was not offered this privilege today, because they received word from the 51st Circuit Court Administrator that this would not be allowed "to prevent excessive and unreasonable interference with the discharge of the court's functions."   This was kind of plagiarized from the FOIA section MCL 15.233(3).

Looking at the Michigan Court Rule cited in the administrative order (MCR 8.110(C)(7)), this allows "... except when a court rule or statute specifies that the court or clerk of the court must provide certain forms without charge, the administrative order may allow the clerk to provide the forms at the cost of reproduction to the clerk."  Emphasis added. 

My goodness, it takes a whole dollar to make one copy-- no wonder nobody trusts this court.  With my cheap copier that goes through ink fast, I can still get my copies under three cents factoring in paper, ink, maintenance, etc.

Whatever their meaningless phrase means, it has been interpreted to mean that I can no longer scan court records or even take a picture of them.  What it does mean is that they can charge you $1 for a copy of a record, while the Prosecutor's Office, whose records are available through FOIA requests, only charge you two cents.  But you can look at them for free, so that's what I opted to do today, with the option to buy a copy worth 50 times its incremental value.  But I had to fill out a silly form shown below:

I title it as silly, because you get through filling everything out, only to find out at the end that you are not under any compulsion to fill out your name and address.  It also does not mention anything about the charge of $1 per copy, so you might be surprised with your final charge if you don't cover that ground beforehand. 

The first thing I noticed on inspection was that this was an appeal of right, which is guided by these rules.  An appeal of right is one that the higher court must hear, if the losing party demands it, while the other type of appeal, a discretionary appeal, is one that the higher court may, but does not have to, consider. For example, in the federal system, there is an appeal of right from the District Court to the Court of Appeals, but appeals from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court are discretionary.   

Due to the appellant's station as public officers, all appeal fees were waived, and the transcripts of the three pre-lim hearings were ordered without any cost to the AGO or prosecutor.  A copy of Judge Wadel's ruling was included as was the docketing statement of what all was filed in the District Court proceedings. 

Looking through this statement, the most interesting thing that I uncovered was the names of several witnesses that were never called upon to testify at the preliminary hearing but were subpoenaed to come nonetheless.  There were 28 in all, most of which I can place from the previous trial except for an A. Sandretto and F. Nelson.  If anyone knows their contributions let me know. 

The only other thing of interest in the docketing statement was that on September 22 the exhibits were returned to AGO attorney Pendergast and the LPD.  The appellant brief should be coming out shortly with the reasoning behind this appeal of what seems like a sound judgment.  Hopefully, we can see a better argument coming out of the prosecution this time-- they definitely have a more sympathetic judge in Richard "Alice" Cooper.

[XLFD]

The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) has reported at 4:45 PM today (Friday) that a sizable Appeals Brief has been filed by AG Pendergast in the 51st Circuit Court as of Thursday.  As you can imagine, the court, prosecutor or AGO likely waited until the last minute on Friday to issue a press release to the media, so that nobody could immediately go and look at what the brief says in its entirety.  This is what's commonly known as tainting the jury pool by giving only part of the story to the media.

[Marilyn Weinberg]

OMG that picture is hysterical!  Great article, as usual.  The only thing I can add, which you might have already found out - is the identity of F. Nelson.  I assume that would be "Fawn Nelson" - formerly one of Ariel's best friends.  I don't know the current status of their friendship.

[XLFD]

The Sandretto woman (Alexis) is someone who had was mentioned on MCP about the case by an April A., saying that "Your report is incorrect, the information that was said about Kate being found deceased came from Alexis Sandretto in Ludington, she posted that on Ken Willson’s page,which is April Langes boyfriend." back in April of 2013 as seen in the comments here:  http://www.masoncountypress.com/2013/03/14/chief-says-no-truth-to-b...

Beyond that, I know little else of the woman besides she was from Scottville when she was subpoenaed.  Thanks for the compliment, Marilyn.