Defending liberty

Except in extraordinary circumstances, persons accused of a crime have a right to be released while awaiting trial. 

Jeffrey Stoltz was charged with financial crimes in May 2017 in Kent County. The prosecutor asked for money bail, which would require Stoltz to put up cash in order to be released, but Judge Jeffrey O’Hara found that a personal recognizance bond was appropriate because Mr. Stoltz had appeared in court for every proceeding and had no criminal history. Mr. Stoltz, maintaining his innocence, took the case to trial, which began in April 2018. However, the prosecutor then dismissed the case, and refiled it the same day, this time drawing a different judge, Judge Mark Trusock. 

In July 2018, after Mr. Stoltz rejected a plea offer, Judge Trusock raised his bail to $200,000 cash, which Mr. Stoltz could not afford. Mr. Stoltz was sent to jail to await a trial scheduled for September. He lost his job, and his wife and children can scarcely make ends meet. 

In August 2018, the ACLU of Michigan filed an emergency appeal on Mr. Stoltz’s behalf, arguing that Michigan law requires release on personal recognizance unless the court determines that the person will not appear or would be a danger if released, findings that Judge Trusock did not make in this case. Unfortunately, the Court of Appeals denied the emergency motion by a vote of 2-1, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. 

(People v. Stoltz, ACLU Attorneys Miriam Aukerman and Dan Korobkin; Cooperating Attorneys Julia Anne Kelly and Kenneth Tableman; co-counsel Daisy Benavidez.)

Read our Fall 2018 Legal Docket.

Ms. Goocher is the only female member of the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s club wrestling team. Although she competed successfully against male wresters throughout high school, the National Collegiate Wrestling Association (NCWA) refuses to allow women to wrestle men.  Because there are no other women on her team and no other women wrestlers in the entire Midwest conference, NCWA rules say she must sit out the entire regular season. The only time she can wrestle women is the national championships at the end of the season — a tournament she won her freshman, sophomore and junior years. 

In October 2017, the ACLU joined with the National Women’s Law Center and the Women’s Sports Foundation in writing a letter urging the NCWA to change its rules so that Ms. Goocher and other women in her situation can compete against men during the regular season. Our letter explained that the rule deprives women of an equal opportunity to wrestle which is both discriminatory and exposes public universities that participate in the NCWA to liability. 

Unfortunately, NCWA responded by blaming Ms. Goocher for not recruiting enough women to her team so that she could compete and suggesting that she travel hundreds of miles on her own dime to compete in non-NCWA tournaments. 

(ACLU of Michigan Attorneys Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio and Michael J. Steinberg; National ACLU Attorneys Galen Sherwin and Lenora Lapidus; Neena Chaudhry of the National Women’s Law Center; Deborah Slaner Larkin of the Women’s Sports Foundation.)

Read more case background.

In 2016 a Michigan prisoner died under suspicious circumstances; he was allegedly involved in an altercation with another prisoner, and prison guards shocked him with a taser. Spencer Woodman, an independent journalist who reports nationally on criminal justice issues, learned that the entire incident was captured on video and requested a copy of the footage under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) refused to release the video, claiming that its disclosure would somehow undermine prison security. In 2017 the ACLU of Michigan filed a lawsuit on Woodman’s behalf, arguing that the state had no legitimate justification for keeping the video secret. During discovery, we learned that the MDOC staff has a policy of automatically denying all FOIA requests for videos, without even viewing the video in question to determine whether or how its disclosure would threaten security. In 2019 Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Diane Stephens ruled that MDOC’s policy was illegal and ordered the state to turn over the video footage. However, the judge then slashed the ACLU cooperating attorneys’ fees by 90% because the work was being done pro bono (i.e., without payment from the client), and we appealed. In 2021 the Court of Appeals ruled that we had only partially prevailed in the lawsuit. We appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case and in July 2023 ruled in our favor. By a vote of 5-2, the Court held that we had prevailed completely, and that attorneys’ fees cannot be reduced based on the pro bono nature of the work. The case has been remanded for recalculation of attorneys’ fees. (Woodman v. Michigan Department of Corrections; ACLU Attorney Dan Korobkin; Cooperating Attorneys Robert Riley, Marie Greenman, Olivia Vizachero, and Rian Dawson of Honigman.)