The case against a township supervisor in Washtenaw County accused of illegally accessing a political opponent’s email has been dismissed, attorneys for the defendant announced.
Jillian Kerry was accused of improperly accessing then-Scio Township Supervisor Will Hathaway’s email account in November 2023. Her attorneys said Kerry, at that time a township trustee, used a communal township laptop while preparing to host a public meeting via the Zoom application.
When she clicked on the laptop’s Outlook application in order to find a link to the Zoom meeting, the computer automatically opened Hathaway’s email account.
“Within approximately one minute, a cached and unsent email and meeting invitation were transmitted from Hathaway’s account, leading prosecutors to accuse Kerry of intentionally accessing the account and committing felony computer crimes,” said Kerry’s legal team at the Dykema law firm in a statement.
Previously, Kerry and Hathaway ran against one another for the township supervisor position — in the 2020 Democratic primary — with Hathaway earning the nomination with 57.6% of the vote.
In 2024, when Kerry again sought the supervisor job, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office filed criminal charges against her that June, just weeks before the July 2024 primary vote. She went on to win the election over John Boyle with 59% of the vote. She was unopposed in the general election.
Kerry was charged with using computers to commit a crime and interfering with electronic communications. Her attorneys said the charges could have landed her four years in prison and would have jeopardized her ability to serve in elected office.
In June 2025, the case was bound over for trial in Michigan’s 22nd Circuit Court.
The township paid more than $103,000 to reimburse Kerry for attorneys’ fees, according to an Ann Arbor Independent report. Her defense team included Mark D. Chutkow and Michael Bullotta, former federal prosecutors who worked on the corruption case against former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
On June 3, the case was dismissed via nolle prosequi, meaning prosecutors no longer wished to pursue the charges. The decision came less than five weeks before the case was set to go to trial, according to online court records.
Washtenaw County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Victoria Burton-Harris indicated that Hathaway wanted the case dismissed. Burton-Harris told MLive that prosecutors submitted the nolle prosequi request “in the interests of justice” and “consistent with the victim’s wishes.”
Kerry’s defense team said that by working with a computer forensics expert, they were able to establish that she could not have navigated the thousands of email in Hathaway’s account, found a message more than 15 months old, read it and forwarded within the 1-minute timeframe between when she opened the Outlook app and when the email was forwarded.
“This dismissal reflects the importance of carefully testing criminal allegations through rigorous investigation, forensic analysis, and motion practice,” Chutkow said in a press release. “When the facts and circumstances were fully examined, the prosecution case became unviable.”
Officials with the Prosecutor’s Office didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
mreinhart@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Scio Township official accused of computer crimes sees case dismissed
Reporting by Max Reinhart, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Max Reinhart, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
