Judge, Jared, and Executioner: Domestic Violence Against Lady Justice Averted

[XLFD]

By the time seven jurors were chosen for a trial happening in the 79th District Court on December 8, 2025, we would know from the voir dire process that this was a case where a woman was being charged with domestic violence against a man that was living at her townhouse apartment in Pineway.  By the time six of those jurors would come back with a verdict at the end of the day and after a very short period of deliberating, those who witnessed what went on in the court that day would not be surprised with their unanimous decision.  Not guilty.

The problems with this case were clear to observers, and presumably the jury reaching such a verdict so expediently.  First, the officer responding to the original call failed to use any sort of common-sense reasoning in investigating the incident, choosing to believe the much less credible of the two accounts he received.  Second, the officer arrested the woman, a mother of the three minor children, who told the officer about an assault on her that resulted in nasty-looking bruises; an officer who then sought to have criminal charges placed on her rather than the man who suffered no apparent injury. 

Third, the Mason County Prosecutor, a woman herself, who had the opportunity to review the reports and body cam footage of the weak case and went ahead and pressed charges relentlessly against this woman leading up to this jury trial.  Fourth, that over the course of the trial, Mark Webb, assistant prosecutor, failed to realize after his main witness melted down and his video greatly helped the defense, that he was just wasting everyone's time by continuing the farce. 

In recounting what happens at a domestic violence (DV) trial, most reporters choose to cover up the identity of the victim and only lay out the perpetrator's name.  We will continue that tradition here, but since it became obvious over the course of this exercise that the police and prosecution had gotten the roles of victim and prosecutor reversed, the man's name will be revealed and the name of the woman who was completely vindicated by the process will be protected; we will refer to her as "Laura". 

This reporter was given a heads up that this prosecution seemed unjust, but other than that tip I knew nothing about the facts or the people in the case that was about to be tried and came in ignorant of what happened like one of the jurors.  Though the trial would take the full day, I was the only person observing what happened from the cheap seats during the whole time.

Prosecutor Webb would lead off the case telling us that an incident happened at Laura's Pineway Apartment about an hour before dusk on July 21st, 2025.  In summary, Laura and George Campbell, who had been added to Laura's lease agreement just two months before, were both in the bedroom and watching their own media when allegedly Laura was getting frustrated about George not being interested in the movie segment that she was trying to get him to watch. 

Webb would relate an escalation over this continued with her picking up a desk lamp and swinging it at him while holding the cord, where he narrowly averted getting hit on the head by pushing back on his chair and getting hit on the hand.  He then went out into the living room, called 911 and waited outside until Officer Jared Versluis of the Ludington Police Department (LPD) arrived.  Versluis would arrest Laura after talking briefly with both and later request DV charges from the prosecutor.  

Laura's lawyer, Nancy Urban, would follow in her opening statement telling us that Laura had lived seven years in Pineway with her three kids, two of which were under seven years old without issue.  Once George arrived, problems followed.  She indicated that after Laura spent a night in jail and was arraigned the next day, she was welcomed at the women's shelter ran by COVE who believed she was the actual victim of DV and they took pictures of the injuries that Officer Versluis decided to ignore that prior night.  

Urban would recount a different version of events, where a napping George gets woken up by Laura's youngest kids and moves to a desk to watch videos.  Distractions from the kids and Laura continue, making him get up to leave the bedroom, where he pushes Laura aside into an open closet on his way out with enough force to cause her to tumble over a small filing cabinet and suffer pain and bruises on her arms and legs.  Threatening to call 911 on George as she struggles to get up, George seizes the initiative and calls 911 first.  She locks the door as George heads outside so that he won't hurt her anymore.  

This is a classic "he said, she said" scenario that one gets in DV incidents like this was.  As the trial progressed, one would wonder why Laura was the one on trial here as the prosecutor would trot out an unsympathetic and uncredible "victim", an investigating officer that failed to do much of an investigation, and snippets of body cam videos that upheld those first two observations.  

Let's look at George Franklin Campbell, the first one to take the witness stand.  One of the technical issues decided outside of the jury's view was whether the defense could bring up the fact that he was on probation at the time of this incident.  While the defense would win on the ability to do this, the jury would be cleared later when she made a statement about it being a felony probation during cross examination.  She could have avoided that if she just asked him if it was probation for a misdemeanor offense.  Webb would likely also object to that, but the point would be made.  During lunch break, I did what jurors couldn't do and looked at Campbell's record, and found he plead guilty to possession of meth/ecstasy almost one year to the day of this incident

 

This on its own does not prove that he wasn't a victim of DV in July of 2025; his testimony would show that much better.  His story of what happened just didn't sound plausible.  We heard of a woman that wouldn't stop bugging him to look at a part of a horror movie.  A woman that all of a sudden got a feral and malevolent look in her eye as she got frustrated and grabbed a cord to a clamp lamp that was on the side of his desk.  A woman who swung the lamp like a medieval flail trying to bash him on the head with it but missing.  It sounded like a plot to his own horror movie. 

But the implausible scenario he laid out to Prosecutor Webb, was not the same one that he would offer when cross examined by Urban.  The case fell apart during this time, because at one point, the supposed crime victim lost his temper when his veracity was in question and actively refused to answer any further questions in the course of his snit.  Webb was able to bring him back to being cooperative, but the damage was done.  A reasonable person observing his angry outburst could honestly believe that he would have pushed a woman over a filing cabinet over a minor matter.

Prosecutor Webb could have saved all the jurors an afternoon after George's failed thespian role as a victim by dismissing the charge at that point, but Webb apparently thought there was enough left in his bag of tricks to save the case.  He was quite wrong, the afternoon would decidedly show that this slapstick should have never made it here.

LPD Sergeant Jared Versluis along with his body cam footage would be the only other witness to testify for the prosecution.  The "Judge, Jared, and Executioner" in the title refers to the determination of this law dog to make arrests without using a lot of common sense or legal sense.  Recall, he played a major part in a downtown domestic incident, where another woman was taken into custody for DV following Versluis witnessing her slap her boyfriend on the back of his head in a playful manner that the much bigger boyfriend took no issue with. 

Versluis was also the officer that, absent of any crime being committed, yanked Joe Oquist off his porch, threw him onto the ground, with help, punctured then man's lung, and had the audacity to charge the man with two felonies for resisting.  Several other questionable incidents and outcomes can be reviewed by using the Ludington Torch's search feature and entering his last name.

In this case, Sgt. Versluis was there primarily to introduce his body cam and their message together basically concurred, but that was about all that worked in his favor.  The court and I saw that he arrives and meets with George outside, the "victim" suited quite appropriately in a white wifebeater t-shirt.  Versluis is told a story, one that significantly differs from the two that George laid out in court.  He observed no bruises on George, who told him that a lamp hit him on the hand after she swung it around.

This gets even more interesting when the action goes inside.  A cooperative Laura tells Versluis the course of events, we see the lamp clipped on the side of the table as if nothing happened with it, a light (mysteriously unbroken) poking out of it.  She tells Versluis at the scene of the crime that she was pushed into an open closet over a two-door filing cabinet as a frustrated George tried to get out of the bedroom.  Versluis does not follow up or look for any bruises on her, he would never ask to look at them as he would later take her to jail, even when told that she wanted to document them.  

Versluis would take the word of George Campbell, a man who was homeless when Laura took him in, a man who was under probation for meth possession, a man without a very believable story not supported by anything other than his words.  He did this on some misguided whim and then compound that with offering up a charge for prosecution that would only be supported by George Campbell''s unverified statements, made ostensibly to keep him from violating his probation.  Judge, Jared, and Executioner, victimizing this woman a second time.

For the jury saw the pictures of the bruises on Laura, taken by COVE personnel the day after, they would see Laura take the stand in her own defense.  We would hear from her that he would be irritable after being woke up, that he would be calling her an awful mother while looking for his vape pen.  She would ask for him to leave, according to her account, presenting his bag to him, when he left the room pushing her into the closet and over the filing cabinet, where she received those injuries.  While she was checking the children's room to make sure that he did not harm them in any way and telling him that she was going to call the cops, he told her to hang up the phone and she did.  He then used that pause to call them himself and figured out the only way to save his bacon was to play the victim.  

Remarkably, he succeeded thanks to the lack of any meaningful investigation by Versluis who had all that he needed to figure it all out right in front of him.  A reeling prosecutor could not muster much of a defense for his side, going back to Versluis' police report in his cross examination, and hearing Laura tell him quite explicitly:  "No lamp hit Mr. Campbell".  

The jury would take only about 15 minutes to reach a "not guilty" verdict, such deliberations generally don't take less time than this even when everyone agrees because of the selection of the jury foreman and looking over exhibits usually takes this long.  

Upon prompting, her attorney relayed that there had been a very tempting plea bargain offered at the last minute, but her client had turned it down, apparently wanting a chance at redeeming herself and grant her a chance of some dignity after this debacle; she needed this win to insure that she was credible and that justice was not denied for her.  Vindication was perhaps the best gift she could receive in this Christmas season, as she would ask for Versluis and (later) Police Chief Chris Jones to just listen to her and look at pictures of her bruising, but they reportedly refused.

Unfortunately, George Franklin Campbell will not receive the justice he deserves for his part in this pasquinade, as seen above.  Just a matter of weeks before this trial, Campbell received an early discharge from the two years of probation he was given back in late 2024, an action that likely wouldn't have happened if he had been the one to face DV charges from this incident-- rather than marked as a victim by the judge, Jared, and executioner, and then have those specious charges rubber-stamped by a prosecutor that will take up the flimsiest cases imaginable.