Double Jeopardy with Prosecutor Beth Hand

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On March 31st, the Ludington Torch published an article which brought attention to a serious lack of legal understanding and lack of officer morality in a case where we were able to show multiple videos where inaptly named Mason County Deputy Noah Noble tried to exert authority he never had, while destroying public records. 

Kayla Brown, the victim of Noble's violations, was stopped ostensibly for a cracked windshield.   Noble would extend the stop because he became extremely butthurt from Brown's passenger not giving him any ID, he would then order unlawfully Brown to the back of the vehicle.  We would find out that the only reason to order her out was that he was going to grill her on her passenger's identity.  Noble repeatedly threatened to arrest her, impound her vehicle, and send her dogs to a pound, even with others able to drive away the vehicle and take care of the dogs. 

Noble would be assisted in destroying public records by Deputy/SRO Luke Postma, a serious mishap by someone entrusted with our kids at school.  Rather than shutting off both audio and video as he had done back when he was on the LPD and stopped his DWI peer, Austin Mendez, Both deputies shut off their audio for minutes on the Kayla Brown stop and covered their videos with their hands at the same time, a policy violation and a destruction of part of the public record.

As is routine with Mason County Prosecutor Beth Hand (pictured in a slightly adulterated AI photo above), the material you can easily review in the videos and the article and wonder why the deputies are acting against policy, training, and misquoting of legal precedent, Hand overlooked all of that and to her it seemed like a strong case against Kayla Brown, not against the poorly acting deputies.

Surprisingly, this passed enough muster in the district court in order to be sent up to the circuit court for the felony of resisting/opposing (R&O) on Kayla Brown's refusal of an unlawful order. Hand would not play the alleged R&O behavior on the video, likely because it wouldn't help her case to show probable cause that R&O occurred, and Judge Middlebrook passed it along. 

Kayla Brown's attorney (Karri Dibble) would file a motion early this year to dismiss the case, it would be heard in February and in March, Judge Susan Sniegowski would grant that dismissal of the charges with prejudice, as seen below.  To use the term "with prejudice" means a lawsuit is permanently thrown out by the court. The decision is final. The plaintiff/prosecutor is legally barred from ever refiling the same claim or bringing the same charges against the defendant again

Surprised of the dismissal be the usually friendly circuit court judge who was a former prosecutor, Beth Hand would file what is called a motion of reconsideration in order to have the judge review and reconsider her decision, but without any meaningful error of law or new evidence, such motion was doomed for failure.  The motion would be denied by the court on April 28th, with the judge's decision to not 'undismiss' the case delivered to both parties.  

Beth Hand had the power to appeal within 21 days to the Michigan Appeals Court at this point, and thanks to Kayla Brown's request to see her attorney's file, she would find an odd request made by Beth Hand in a May 13 email to the court and Dibble:

An hour later, Dibble would reply, noting that she received the reconsideration opinion and shared it with her client by April 29, further noting that any appeal deadline should be set from that time, as it would be assumed that Hand had also had that opinion put in her mailbox at that time:

Like Karri Dibble, we were not able to discover any Michigan court rule or law of judicature that would allow for the redating of an order as Beth Hand proposed in a case where an order was filed on one day and served on both parties on the other day.  In an email from Hand shortly thereafter she asked the court to affirm that they were timely served a copy of the order, and if not, to reset the appeal clock.  One of the clerk's notified did affirm to both Hand and Dibble that they were both served on the day of the order.  

Asking the court to reset the appeal calendar due to her own oversight, when they have not the power to do so, is one thing, but it gets worse.  Rather than appeal this case upward before the appeal deadline had arrived, Beth Hand decided to reintroduce the same frivolous charge back into the district court on what would have been the last day to appeal up, as seen in the MiCourt System:

The evil and incompetent Beth Hand was subjecting Kayla Brown to what is commonly known as double jeopardy, a legal protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment that prevents a person from being tried or punished twice by the same government for the identical criminal offense. Once a defendant is officially acquitted, the state gets only one chance to prosecute.  Kayla Brown would be re-arraigned for the same crime in the district court that the (superior) circuit court judge dismissed with prejudiced on May 28th.  

That date she would hear the district court (presumably by the magistrate, set probable cause and preliminary exam hearings for an already dismissed issue.  The prosecutor and the inferior court were ready and set to subject this woman found guiltless of a crime to the sausage-making process once again.  But then daylight broke and someone let Beth Hand know about the Fifth Amendment and how it applied to what vile act she was doing.  In a week, the prosecutor entered a 'nolle prosequi' order, meaning that she would not prosecute the case any further:

 

Kayla Brown was just a motorist doing a good deed last year when she was stopped for an almost unnoticeable crack in her windshield.  The body cam videos show she acted within her rights, but more importantly they show Deputy Noah Noble acting outside his powers in order to criminalize constitutionally protected behavior.  Brown could be anybody minding their own business and willing to exercise their God-given rights in a county where the police agencies are ignorant of what their oath of office means.  

She was arraigned twice for doing nothing unlawful, she got her name in the papers and online twice with that name next to two violent felonies she was never a part of.  Like many of us, Kayla Brown's ability to get and retain jobs and otherwise function as a productive member of society are contingent on what a Google search or a criminal record check turns up.  Often those records do not reflect that the charges were baseless, dismissed, and the product of poorly trained police officers who lack the ethical and 'noble' character to be police officers and a prosecutor who just can't say no to anything put in front of her.