LANSING, MI – Early last year, I had a call from Avern Cohn, a retired federal judge legendary for his legal acumen — and temper.
“(Michigan Attorney General Dana) Nessel doesn’t know what she’s doing with these Flint water cases. You can’t have indictments issued by a one-man grand jury. It’s an abuse of the system!
“All these cases are going to be thrown out. It’s a terrific waste of money, and she’s going to be embarrassed,” he told me angrily. Less than a week later the judge, who was 97, died.
And sadly, everything he predicted came true.
Months later, the Michigan Supreme Court unanimously echoed the late judge, saying that, indeed, one man acting as a grand juror (in this case Genesee County Circuit Judge David Newblatt) couldn’t legally issue indictments, that it violated the right of due process. Lower courts then dismissed the criminal charges against nine defendants, who included former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a close aide and a member of his cabinet.
With the statute of limitations running out in most cases, the team of prosecutors bowed to the inevitable at the end of last month, and admitted they were dropping all the cases.
Prosecutors spent, according to media calculations, more than $60 million of taxpayers’ money, and not one case ever came to trial.
Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley issued a statement dripping with the anger that his constituents clearly feel: “I am disheartened and frustrated that justice for the people of Flint has been denied once again.”
There is no disputing that the people of Flint, a mostly Black, mostly poor city got a rotten deal — or that the Snyder administration was responsible for subjecting most of them to lead poisoning. The impoverished city was under state-run emergency management in 2014, when Darnell Earley, an emergency manager appointed by the governor switched the city from Detroit water to much harsher water from the Flint River to save money.
Water officials also failed to add chemicals needed to control corrosion, even after a General Motors factory complained the water was corroding and damaging their engines.
But the Snyder administration ignored complaints and cries for help until the scope of the damage became undeniable. The crisis destroyed Snyder’s political career, who once had national aspirations, but after that couldn’t even speak on a college campus.
The state did agree to set up a $600 million fund to help the thousands of victims, mainly vulnerable children who may have suffered physical and mental damage from lead.
But Flint residents demanded that someone be brought to justice. Soon after the scandal erupted, then-Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette appointed a special prosecutor and a team to look into the case. By the end of 2016, Schuette, a Republican but no friend of Snyder’s, had brought criminal charges against 15 people, including two emergency managers.
But when Dana Nessel succeeded him in 2019, she dismissed Schuette’s entire team, all those charges, and started over.
That astonished some observers, who wondered if it was a case of partisanship rather than justice. Snyder and Schuette are Republicans; Nessel a progressive Democrat.
But in the end, there was more than enough blame to go around. The late Judge Cohn was also a Democrat, but took special exception to the decision to charge Snyder, the former governor, with two counts of willful neglect of duty.
“You (shouldn’t) bring criminal charges against an elected official for policy failures,” he said, indicating that would set a very dangerous precedent indeed.
Regardless of who is to more to blame, what’s clear is that what happened with these cases, as with Flint itself, is a story of epic failure, and one with socioeconomic and racial undertones.
When they dropped the cases last month, the attorney general’s team released a statement that said “our hearts break for the people of Flint … who are once again the victims.”
That didn’t do much to satisfy those people.
Melissa Mays, a local activist, told the Gongwer news service that the meaning of all this is “that Flint lives don’t matter, and it’s okay to poison 100,000 innocent people, as long as you’re a rich white guy and/or a government official.
Mayor Neeley said “this prevailed on a legal technicality, whereby people of color historically have not had the same opportunities.”
What everyone can agree on is that there were no winners here.
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Update: In my October 12 column, I said that Michigan Democrats could possibly lose their narrow, 56-54 majority in the state House of Representatives at the end of this year, if two of their members who were running for mayor in local elections won.
That’s now happened, which means there will be a 54-54 tie when the legislature convenes in January. Both are safe Democratic seats, and Democrats should recapture their majority after special primary and general elections next year, but that will take months.
That is likely to slow the up-to-now dizzying pace of legislation Democrats have been passing, mostly on party-line votes.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
