News File Photo Rick Steiger, new chief public defender in Alpena County — standing — defends a client in Alpena’s 26th Circuit Court on Tuesday as Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski, foreground, listens in a July 2021 News file photo

ALPENA — Last year, Northeast Michigan criminal court cases ended with the smallest share of guilty pleas and the second-largest share of dismissed charges in at least five years, recently released court data shows.

Similar trends were seen statewide, which many people involved in the court process attributed to new state standards for the court-appointed defense attorneys who handle the overwhelming majority of criminal cases, leading to a better defense for people who can’t afford to hire their own lawyer.

Those standards — implemented over the last five years — for the first time require such attorneys to be well-trained, to conduct thorough investigations of their cases, to meet with their clients early in the court process, and to oversee a reasonable caseload. The standards also require counties to pay those attorneys a reasonable amount, among other standards.

The state gives grants to counties to implement the standards.

“I’d like to say that we played a part, and I think we really did,” said Kristen Staley, executive director of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, the state agency that creates those standards. “Because we have attorneys that are well-trained, that are using best practices, that are given the time they need, that are compensated adequately, they are absolutely producing better outcomes for clients.”

While she said public defenders in Alpena “have in fact been more aggressive in filing motions and arguing them pre-adjudication,” Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski said she thought the increase in dismissals had more to do with the court system’s effort to clear a backlog of cases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic than with the efforts of defense attorneys.

Check out the interactive graphic below. Story continues below the graphic.

Check out the interactive graphic below. Story continues below the graphic.

“As pre-COVID and COVID-era cases culminated and came to a head in 2022, several defendants had accumulated multiple cases throughout the time that courts were not fully functioning,” Muszynski said in an email to The News. “Dismissing one case for a plea in one or more other cases, which would amount to the same amount of jail/prison time and probationary/parole terms, made sense, to clear the trial time for the cases that simply could not be resolved. As it was, we were not able to have trials on all our pre-COVID cases until January of 2023.”

Guilty pleas remain by far the primary way criminal cases end, making up 71% of all circuit court cases across Alpena, Presque Isle, Montmorency, and Alcona counties in 2022.

But that’s down from more than 79% in those counties in 2018, according to recently released data from the State Court Administrative Office.

About 13% of cases ended with dismissal of the charges — either by the judge or the prosecutor — in 2022, up from about 9% in 2018. About 13% of cases ended with dismissal in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Statewide, about 72% of cases ended with a guilty plea in 2022, down from 78% in 2018. About 12% of cases ended with a dismissal of charges last year, up from 8.5% in 2018.

Ed Black, chief judge of the 26th Circuit Court serving Alpena and Montmorency counties, said he didn’t know what led to the dip in guilty pleas and the hike in dismissals, but he said the Indigent Defense Commission “is having an impact.

“I think it’s impacted the court system,” he said. “There is far more litigation. We are constantly setting trials. And we’re not just setting one trial. We’re having to set multiple trials for the same day.”

A 2016 investigation by the Lansing State Journal found court-appointed attorneys — paid little compared to private-practice lawyers and overburdened with cases — often rushed their clients into plea deals, sometimes beginning negotiations with the prosecutor before even meeting their clients. Court-appointed attorneys, who handle as much as 80% of all criminal cases, also filed few motions challenging the prosecution and spent little time with their clients outside of court.

Improper defense played a part in about half of all of Michigan’s overturned convictions listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, the State Journal found.

That’s the culture the Indigent Defense Commission, created by a 2013 state law, hopes to change by implementing new standards for public defenders.

Before the standards, only seven Michigan counties had a public defender office, in which defense attorneys are salaried and work only on indigent defense cases. Elsewhere, judges appoint private-practice attorneys on a case-by-case basis, and those attorneys have to balance low-paying court-appointed work with their private practice work to make ends meet.

Now, Michigan has 33 public defender offices serving 39 counties, including the Northeast Michigan Regional Defender Office serving Alpena, Montmorency, and Oscoda counties, which opened in July 2021.

Rick Steiger, chief defender at that office, said his team has made a difference in the defense of accused persons in the counties they serve. He said, for example, that he and his team of five attorneys file many more motions challenging the prosecution than attorneys did under the old system, and those motions sometimes lead prosecutors to dismiss charges.

“In a nutshell, we’re able to properly do our job without worrying about, as a private practitioner, the rent’s paid, the lights are on, and everything else,” Steiger said. “We get to focus on making sure the folks we represent are all we’re concerned about.”

Staley, the Indigent Defense Commission executive director, said her office has not yet researched the efficacy of the new standards, but is engaged in data collection to help with that effort in the future. She said the office will measure changes in the number of cases that end with guilty pleas and the number of cases dismissed.

Case disposition, by the numbers

The percentage of cases that ended by guilty plea and dismissal across Alpena, Presque Isle, Montmorency, and Alcona counties.

2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Guilty plea 79.09% 79.59% 76.9% 73.33% 70.78%

Dismissed 9.12% 7.49% 13.36% 8.7% 12.6%

Source: News analysis of data from the State Court

Administrative Office