Detroit Prosecutor Pulls Prosecutors Out Of Hundreds of Cases While Suing The State Over Budget Cuts

klw2Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has pulled prosecutors out of all traffic court and domestic violence cases after her office laid off 22 prosecutors due to budget cuts. Now, with Detroit cutting its police force to a dangerous level, the chances of getting caught in a crime is much lower in the city and, if that does occur, the case may be dismissed due to a lack of a prosecutor. Defendants are finding themselves cleared without even having to raise a defense. It is not clear whether police will continue to make arrests in these areas if Worthy is not going to prosecute. Detroit has not only been hit with a falling population and the loss of the auto industry but a political system that has retained incompetent and corrupt politicians — many of whom have been under criminal investigation. As for Worthy, we have previously discussed her controversial prosecutorial decisions and her own scandal over a foreclosed home. I presume that among the cases that will not be prosecuted is Worthy’s prior controversial demand to prosecute parents who miss teacher-parent meetings at public schools.


This week, Worthy has pulled out prosecutors in traffic and domestic abuse cases, which have been dropped for lack of prosecution. That could pose a serious danger for abused citizens in domestic cases where the alleged abusers are being given an effective pass. However, Worthy insists that “my prosecutors … are overworked, underpaid, [and] have too much to do” after budget cuts to her staff.

Worthy, however, does have time to sue the county executive on the grounds that the budget for her office does not allow her to fulfill her constitutional duties. Such budgetary decisions are viewed as a political question generally. For a court to order the spending of more money would raise significant questions under the separation of powers doctrine and the political question doctrine.

Detroit’s fall into an urban nightmare is the result of decades of poor leadership, including scandals involving its police chief, that has now resulted in a fire department asking to allow buildings to buildings to burn, street lights turned off at night, and the termination of other basic services.

Source: Freep and ABA Journal

13 thoughts on “Detroit Prosecutor Pulls Prosecutors Out Of Hundreds of Cases While Suing The State Over Budget Cuts”

  1. Benito Juarez is our LATAM Jedi and he can return back attacking their enemies in the States and Mexico. We can win against the socialist and communist imperial monopolies. Is it applied to IT businesses?
    A) First, we have identify that these monopolies are trying to close the end year accounting period using Hyperion or Teradata when the ERP should close automatically and in real time the accounting period, this is done because they need experts to cook the accounting books in the ERP for this year as they have done it before. At the same time the modules are not scientifically integrated, Activity Based Costing is not working, it cannot give us an increase in productivity or cost reduction, they are trying to use BI/BW to manage the data bases but it is impossible because this is depend of the mathematical models and not the data bases itself, that only can be changed by an expert in industrial engineering.
    B) Socialist and communist monopolies are starting hiring Americans but they still are trying to sell offshore IT, it is so risky because for sure are attacking Americans in their credit and others because they have access to our data bases offshore.
    C) In the socialist and communist countries, they are starting to change laws to reduce the power of their socialist and communist monopolies, but the prices are still higher in USA. I think that it is important to include small and medium companies in the Free Trade Agreement and really open the competition because now-a-days commerce is under the control of these socialist and communist monopolies.
    D) They are still using the extremists, the mafias to keep their power and fuzzy the economic environment, it is time to cut these relationships with mafias, catholic church and others that are attacking us in our families and houses.
    E) Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juarez Masons should be returning back, they are the new Jedi of the Free Trade Wars.

  2. It is approaching the very essence of Pirate Territory. I bet that the police would give you hell if they caught you riding bikes through Detroit neighborhoods and camped out in your little pup tent and carried a Swiss Passport. Yeah, and yesterday we were making fun of India for doing that.

  3. I forgot to add: “The Great Migration of the 1940s-1950s (Blacks leaving the south to the north) led to the Great Exdous (Whites leaving the cities for the Suburbs)” Clark (1965). Moreover, since the late 1980s, this exdous includes middle class Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc. (see William Julius Wilson’s books: The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Undercalss, and Public Policy 2nd Ed. 2012; There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning, 2007). With all the additions to the Cty of Detroit: New Football and Baseball stadiums, Auto Bailout; Quicken Loans and other Fortune 500 companies relocated their headquarters to Downtown Detroit since the late 1990s-early 2000s, one would think that there would have been a massive rebounding taking place. So far, there is no self-sustainable plan to bring Detroit back.

    On the other hand, I do like former running back Barry Sanders’ view of Detroit:

  4. Darren,

    That’s is in the works as we post on this blog…. An emergency manager has been appointed….. If you’ll see the post Elaine and I spoke about education on you’ll see it more in detail…

  5. The state needs to intervene and restructure this prosecutor’s office and city gov’t for a while.

  6. Maybe they will only pursue real crimes, instead of this piddly crap they are usually spinning their wheels on.
    Concentrate on crimes, where there is a real, particularized identifiable, victim.

  7. Turley mistates the source article. It says that the DA cannot show to “all” traffic and domestic violence cases, so prosecutors are not showing up to “a number” of those cases. It does not say, as Turley writes, that the prosecutor “has pulled prosecutors out of all traffic court and domestic violence cases.”

  8. What G.Mason said and might I add a great big “We’re spending billions a month on what? To benefit whom?”

    This is a symptom of the tip of our toppling into the crevasse created by expansionist wars for private profits. Money wasted and misdirected into the wrong hands as our infrastructure crumbles to dust. The sound of a firm boot trod upon the path to decay and anarchy.

  9. Watch and Listen to this interchange between Bill Maher & Charles Leduff (on Leduff’s book: Detroit: An American Autopsy):

    http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/detroit/index.ssf/2013/03/charlie_leduff_talks_detroit_o.html

    Leduff’s book provides an interesting take on what is happening to Detroit. Is this a omen for other major cities in America? Or is it cyclical (i.e. is this just a process of the up & down turn of the economy? Detroit will rebound?)

    Dr. Kenneth B. Clark’s book, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (1965), consents that it is due to ‘White Flight.’

    Leduff is not accurate in one aspect of his commentary by stating that their is no money in the suburbs. Oakland County (‘suburbs’ of Detroit) is one of the wealthiest county in America.

    See also City of Detroit:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_City (Detroit is facing $14 billion in debt and deficits?).

  10. Traffic i understand to an extent. But domestic violence? Why not drug and prostitution.

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