LANSING — More than 100 criminal convictions were wrongly set aside due to a coding error by the Michigan State Police, a spokeswoman said July 31.
Under Michigan law, some misdemeanor and felony convictions are automatically expunged, under certain circumstances, after seven to 10 years. On a daily basis, the MSP notifies courts of the convictions that need to be automatically expunged through use of an automated system. Expunged records can still be accessed by law enforcement and the judiciary for certain limited purposes, but they are no longer publicly available to employers, landlords, and others.
In July, the MSP became aware of a coding error in the system that caused 115 convictions for a serious misdemeanor — using the Internet or a computer to make a prohibited communication — to be automatically expunged when that crime was not eligible for such treatment, MSP spokeswoman Lori Dougovito said in a July 31 email to the Detroit Free Press.
The Detroit Free Press broke the news of the criminal convictions that were wrongly set aside on June 30.
“The error affected 97 individuals,” Dougovito said. “MSP notified the 32 affected courts and advised them the records would require correction.”
But the correction notice the MSP sent out to 32 courts across Michigan compounded the earlier error and drew a rebuke from the State Court Administrative Office.
“Please reinstate all cases on the attached spreadsheet at your earliest convenience,” Eric Pitonyak of the MSP’s “Set Aside and Expungement Unit” said in a July 22 memo to one local court.
After learning about that memo and similar ones to other courts, State Court Administrator Thomas Boyd sent a July 29 clarifying memo to all Michigan courts.
“Do not comply with (the MSP) directive,” Boyd’s memo to court administrators began.
Boyd told the Free Press in a July 30 phone interview that his memo was intended to clarify to court administrators that “only judges make decisions in the judicial branch,” and no convictions should be reinstated without judicial review.
Dougovito said the memo was intended as “an administrative notification to alert courts of the issue, not as a directive to replace the judicial review process which determines whether a conviction was improperly or erroneously set aside.”
Mike Nichols, an East Lansing criminal defense attorney, said both the impacted defendants and any relevant victims should be notified and given an opportunity to be heard before decisions are made on reinstating any of the 115 convictions that were erroneously expunged.
When Michigan’s expungement law, which took effect in 2020, was expanded to include automatic expungements in 2023, “we all kind of knew there would be gaffes like this one,” Nichols said in a July 31 interview.
“I think this is just an unfortunate screw-up,” which appears to have originated in the MSP records section, which is normally highly competent, Nichols said.
About 1.6 million Michigan convictions, which include both misdemeanors and certain felonies, have been automatically set aside since 2023, Dougovito said.
State Rep. Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Township, chair of the House Oversight Committee that has been highly critical of MSP management generally and the MSP Director, Col. James Grady, in particular, said in a July 31 text message that mistakenly expunging a criminal record is a serious matter.
“This is what you get when you aren’t diligent about what your actual job responsibilities are,” DeBoyer said.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Courts wrongly set aside 115 criminal convictions due to MSP error
Reporting by Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
