Judge dismisses charges against 7 in Flint crisis
High court ruled against previous judge’s authority
A Michigan judge dismissed charges Tuesday against seven people in the Flint water scandal, including two former state health officials blamed for deaths from Legionnaires’ disease.
Judge Elizabeth Kelly took action three months after the Michigan Supreme Court unanimously said a different judge acting as a one-person grand jury had no authority to issue indictments.
Kelly rejected efforts by the attorney general’s office to just send the cases to Flint District Court and turn them into criminal complaints, the typical path to filing felony charges in Michigan.
“Simply put, there are no valid charges,” Kelly said.
Kelly’s decision doesn’t affect former Gov. Rick Snyder. That’s only because he was charged with misdemeanors and his case is being handled by a judge in a different Flint court. But he, too, was indicted in a process declared invalid by the Supreme Court.
In 2014, Flint managers appointed by Snyder took the city out of a regional water system and began using the Flint River to save money while a new pipeline to Lake Huron was being built. But the river water wasn’t treated to reduce its corrosive qualities. Lead broke off from old pipes and contaminated the
system for more than a year.
Separately, the water was blamed for an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.
Former state health director Nick Lyon and former chief medical executive Eden Wells were charged with involuntary manslaughter in nine deaths linked to Legionnaires’. They were accused of failing to warn the Flint area about the outbreak in a timely fashion.
Lyon’s attorneys praised Kelly’s decision and urged the attorney general’s office
to close a “misguided prosecution.”
“This misuse of the criminal justice system has to stop,” Chip Chamberlain and Ron DeWaard said. “Misleading statements about what Director Lyon did or didn’t do contribute nothing to a constructive public dialogue and do not represent justice for anyone.”
An email seeking comment was sent to state prosecutors.
Besides Lyon and Wells, charges were dismissed against Snyder’s longtime fixer in state government, Rich Baird; former senior aide Jarrod Agen; former Flint managers Gerald Ambrose and Darnell Earley; and Nancy Peeler, a health department manager.
Michigan’s six-year statute of limitations could be a problem in some cases if the attorney general’s office wants to file charges again. The deadline, however, would be longer for charges faced by Lyon and Wells.
Prosecutors in Michigan typically file felony charges in District Court after a police investigation. The use of a onejudge grand jury was extremely rare and was mostly utilized in Detroit and Flint to protect witnesses, especially in violent crimes, who could testify in private.
Prosecutors Fadwa Hammoud and Kym Worthy chose that path in the Flint water probe to hear evidence in secret and get indictments against Snyder and others.
But the high court said Michigan law is clear: A one-judge grand jury can’t issue indictments. The process apparently had never been challenged.
Before leaving office in 2019, then-Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, had pledged to put people in prison. But the results were different: Seven people pleaded no contest to misdemeanors that were eventually scrubbed from their records.
After Dana Nessel, a Democrat, was elected, she got rid of special counsel Todd Flood and put Hammoud and Worthy, the respected Wayne County prosecutor, in charge.