Puritan Witch Hunts of Mason County: McLain and Lucht

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In American tradition, the most serious crimes one could assign against individuals had obvious victims targeted by the criminals.  Admittedly, in our distant pre-revolutionary past we had our variations from such a principal, the Salem witch trials come to mind, where innocent women suffered at the hands of an unjust legal process.  The concept of a witch hunt lives on to this day to describe situations where some people are unfairly arrested, arraigned and adjudged in the name of justice.  President Trump has used the term often to describe legal actions taken against him during his candidacy and against many of his supporters for their actions late in his first term.  

Mason County has our own share of modern witch hunts. This news agency was targeted back in 2016 by the City of Ludington, that same public body went after this reporter back in 2024.  In both cases, there was no violation of the law, but law enforcement (LPD) got out their own modern version of a ducking stool in an attempt to depict our contributors and this investigative media outlet as criminal in nature.  While in reality, we just report the truth about their actions and policies, which are currently very corrupt.  

In this article, we will shift focus to two citizens, recently sentenced for felonious sex crimes at the 51st Circuit Court on June 24, 2025.  While we doubt that either will enjoy any further time in the spotlight, and we feel somewhat awkward and uncomfortable in coming to their defense given that they will be registered as sexual offenders for decades, we feel their plight deserves to be aired and looked at closer as a general failure of the local justice system, the local sheriff's department, the local corporate media, and even the local educational system.

Shawn Allen McLain

McLain was serving as a paraprofessional in the CTE program at WSCC at the time he was arrested, serving in the department of graphic communications under Brian LaCombe:

According to the WSCC handbook, the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program offers 13 different programs to high school juniors and seniors from the four-county area primarily served by WSCC.  In a typical graphic communications program, students learn pre-media production, digital imaging methods, offset lithographic printing, and finishing processes, using current technology. 

I was tipped off about McLain's infractions from an anonymous source and did some research on his case before attending his sentencing hearing.  I could find nothing with a thorough Google search.  Local court records show that he was charged and arraigned in May 2024 for felonies Child Sexually Abusive Material Possession (CSAMP) and doing so using a computer to commit a crime.  

The relevant part of the CSAMP statute listed indicates McLain knowingly possessed "child sexually abusive material" knowing the person depicted was under 18 years old.  CSAM is defined earlier, summarily meaning any depiction which is of a child involving sexual intercourse, erotic fondling, sadomasochistic abuse, masturbation, passive sexual involvement, sexual excitement, or erotic nudity.

Assuming these were credible charges by the arrest, why was McLain's arraignment and subsequent court actions (even sentencing after he plead guilty), covered up by the media and the West Shore ESD?  This is the biggest scandal here, that McLain was arraigned and plead guilty of two felonies including CSAMP, and nothing has been ever said by either. 

Remember, McLain worked at WSCC regularly with juniors and seniors in high school, mostly under 18 years old, shouldn't this have been relevant to relay to the public just in case?  The arraignment and plea hearing of the other offender that we will look at, who had no position of authority over children was posted prominently in the media, as were the two times the LPD came after the Ludington Torch for non-crimes.  What strings were pulled in order to protect McLain's connections to WSCC and WSESD from coming out in a news-starved local media complex about this serious charge against one of their employees at the time of his arrest?  

But the impact is perhaps even deeper when one figures out that McLain was a long-serving member of the Hamlin Fire Department before this incident doing stints promoting fire safety as "Mr. Fireman" in front of very young children.  The local justice system shields their own, we've seen it happen a couple of times for MSP Trooper Sammy Seymour, who appears to be a repeat offender of domestic violence incidents.  But you can only read about them here.

Even though he has been shielded from scrutiny by the educational and justice system, surprisingly, one has no indication after looking at the sheriff and court records that McLain committed any crime.  The full sheriff's report and investigation, heavily redacted without any clear rationale proffered, was released only after an unlawful 10-day FOIA extension was asked for.  In those 13 pages, there is no mention of anything found on any device that could rise to being CSAM, and such a determination would not fall under any FOIA exemption.  Any reasonable prosecutor would not take up this case given that report and investigation received by us. 

Troubling is that this incident, which began with a female student noticing a titillating image on McLain's computer, began in early November 2023 and then went in slow motion.  After looking over the material present on McLain's computer at WSCC on the 8th at the college's urging, the sheriff's office drafted a search warrant on the 15th.  This warrant for his phone and Google account wouldn't be approved by the magistrate until December 20th.  Only after looking through these, did they seek charges, indicating that whatever they had seen on the 8th, leading to his dismissal and trespass at his WSCC office, was not 'sexy' enough for a CSAM charge.  

And what they found was three folders, with no mention of any CSAM in them.  The report is totally over-redacted, exempting even all of the summary of McLain's interview with them, the sheriff's office has a long history of illegally shielding records from the public under Sheriff Kim Cole:  

What this part of the report and the absence of a warrant affidavit in the record indicates is that the county detectives didn't have anything, except maybe a cache of erotic or pornographic images that may or may not have had CSAM within it.  Would any reasonable prosecutor take a case where a request by the sheriff would not include at least a description of why they think this was CSAM and not just erotica containing images of legal women over the age of 17?  Which is legal to look at and archive in files the last time we looked.

And yet, Prosecutor Beth Hand took it up and wouldn't take a plea bargain and it's hard to figure out why not when one looks at the court records even after a Cobbs plea was filed.  A Cobbs plea “authorizes the trial court, at the request of a party, to state on the record the sentence that appears appropriate for the charged offense, on the basis of information available to the court at the time.  McLain's court appointed attorney made the case for leniency in his brief primarily on grounds that calling the material CSAM was a stretch, but Prosecutor Hand's response (p.1) and (p.2) fails to suggest why the pictures were CSAM as defined by law.

To the contrary, she uses "teenager" synonymously with the legal term of "child", when this is not the case.  There is no evidence in the records (court and sheriff's investigation) that these weren't legal erotica pictures taken off legal erotica websites of legal age women, other than the unsupported claims of CSAM which must be met to charge either felony.  

This is why the Grooter evaluation mentioned in Hand's brief, made by somebody who is known to be prosecutor-friendly when CSAM charges are brought forth, asked for extremely lenient sentencing in this case.  One would believe that this was always a flimsy case by looking at the timeline of events. No search warrant was sought for 7 weeks, an arrest warrant was sought more than 5 months elapsed after that, an arrest and arraignment were made in secret.   

No, it wasn't a strong case and the impetus of prosecuting it was likely due to the fact that the others involved with discovering the issue first, would be wondering why there weren't repercussions for McLain.  But there were big repercussions for him, as he had to quit and was trespassed from his workplace, he is apparently on indefinite administrative leave with his other job as a firefighter, and it's still questionable whether he will be able to attend school events that his children are part of due to his indiscretion. 

But fortunately, he is still supported by his wife, who attended the sentencing.  Not to mention this media outlet, at least until the state proves that there was CSAM involved-- which we believe will never happen due to their inability to make a plausible case for it in our circuit court.  For this seems to have been a witch hunt, initiated after a student and another teacher saw something that shouldn't have ever been on a workplace device (but appears to have been legal by the lack of immediate action).

Dustin William Lucht

The Mason County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) was also involved with what appears to be more legal entrapment than legal enforcement in 2024.  Dustin Lucht was communicating with a stranger who represented himself as a local 14-year-old boy but was actually a member of the MCSO.  Reportedly, Lucht unwisely made an indecent proposal asking for pictures of naughty bits and found himself facing four serious felonies.  

During sentencing, we found that Lucht had a spotless record otherwise and a supportive family, but Prosecutor Hand wouldn't budge in a May 2025 hearing on any charge via another Cobb's plea, nor would she relent at the sentencing hearing, looking at a minimum of 3 years at a correctional facility as a minimum punishment.  Fortunately for Lucht. 51st Circuit Court Judge Susan Sniegowski was quite a bit more sympathetic and even though nobody from the MCSO was present, she railed against the necessity of conducting such "sting" operations (she seemed willing to even go further and say entrapment but checked herself) in a county where there appears to be little or no human trafficking or true accosting not inspired by detectives posing as children looking for a good time.  

Accepting that the communications by Lucht did cross the line of illegality, there is and was no indication that he had any thought of conversing with a minor boy until he was approached on-line by this undercover deputy who likely did his own share of accosting, enticing and soliciting Lucht if one observed how the judge was averse to sending him away for three years (he already served one year) given that the judge had probably seen the full exchange.   

So while Lucht had plead guilty on charges that could have had him serving years in prison, the judge gave him one year concurrent sentences for each, along with 5 years of probation.  As Lucht had credit already for 365 days in the local jail, the sentence appears to be court costs of just under $900 and 5 years of probation.  

As noted, the 22-year-old who assuredly had his own computer devices scoured over during the investigation, seems to have never reached out to minors before for dick pics or anything else, so one has to wonder why the MCSO would contact him out of thin air for what they would call a "sting" operation, where I will go even further and call such action entrapment.  

"Government agents may not originate a criminal design, implant in an innocent person's mind the disposition to commit a criminal act and then induce commission of the crime so that the Government may prosecute." Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 548 (1992).

The observation by Judge Sniegowski would have most certainly gone towards this conclusion had not it chilled her future relationship with the MCSO and the prosecutor who by their actions fully endorse entrapment as a policy that gets successful prosecutions against people like Lucht, who doesn't fit in with the types of people that attend their after-court-hours cocktail parties-- except as wait staff.  

Conclusion:  Two puritan witch hunts where the witches are the victims, and the witch hunters have some explaining to do

Shawn McLain cooperated with all aspects of the investigation into his porn habit; there was no indication that he had used anything but his own internet service and 'trusted' porn sites to download spicy pictures of teenagers and probably older women too, storing them in an external drive given to the detectives.  While there is no indication in the court and investigative records that this was child sexually abusive material, even in the prosecutor's Cobb brief, McLain has gone through Hell the last 20 months.  He will never be able to get back into the two jobs he loved doing at the same capacity, and he will have to register as a sex offender until 2050.  Beyond that he has 5 years of probation, had a couple days in jail, and needs to pay the state over $700.  

Dustin Lucht has spent a year in jail awaiting his "speedy trial" and sentencing. over what appears to be a textbook case of entrapment, in a situation that even made Judge Sniegowski blush in shame.  One is guaranteed that the prosecutor and sheriff will not release the transcript of the conversation that took place between Lucht and the detective, who apparently has a lot of spare time and has no disinclination towards lying if it will give him an entrapment arrest in a county where such crimes never happen without inducement by law enforcement.  If Lucht stays clean, he will be off probation before he's 30, and off the sex offender registry before he's 50.  

The victims?  We still haven't found them unless it's our society as a whole.  We have an older detective pretending he's still in his pubescence and three files labeled "Can't Touch This" one to three in an external drive with erotica therein that has not been investigated for CSAM according to the MXSO report, just accepted as felonious material.  I can't help but think the real bad guys in this story are the badged brownshirts who initiated these victimless prosecutions, disrupting the life arcs of two of our fellow citizens, neither who had a scintilla of lawbreaking in their past.

But one could also point towards Prosecutor Hand, who has let the MCSO know that she won't be afraid to prosecute anything that they want to that crosses her desk and has kept that promise over the last year where she has become Lady Injustice.  Let's also give a dishonorable mention to whoever decided to treat McLain's case differently by keeping his name out of the local paper and local tabloid (The MCP), probably due to his firefighter status, or because the local public ESD wanted to keep this indiscretion secret from the rest of us.  

The most indecent, naughtiest thing in these two cases is not the people that were sentenced this Tuesday, it's the public organizations and officials that prize prosecutions so much that the only victims found in their actions are those being charged with witchcraft.