The Michigan Attorney General’s Office officially declined to investigate Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan for allegedly destroying critical records when he was the Wayne County prosecutor.
In a letter to Mark Craighead, who was exonerated after spending more than seven years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Robert Liddell, chief of Criminal Trial Divisions for the AG’s office, said the statute of limitations has expired in the case.
“After carefully reviewing your letter and the articles that you submitted to me to review, I regret to inform you that we are unable to provide assistance at this time,” the letter states. “A criminal investigation of your complaint is not warranted because any prosecution of the matter is barred by the statute of limitations.”
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy told Metro Times that the records were destroyed while Duggan served as prosecutor from 2001 to 2004. Most, if not all, misdemeanor and felony records from 1995 and earlier were allegedly moved from an off-site warehouse and destroyed in violation of state law.
Duggan, who is running for Michigan Governor as an independent, denies involvement in the file purge and claims he had no idea records were destroyed.
The destruction of the files has created a staggering obstacle for wrongfully convicted inmates seeking to prove their innocence. State law requires prosecutors to retain the files of defendants serving life sentences for at least 50 years or until the inmate dies. Violating the law carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
While that law wasn’t in effect until after the files were destroyed, at least two other state statutes prohibited the destruction of prosecutor files when Duggan was prosecutor.
Craighead says the AG’s decision leaves innocent inmates with little to no recourse if they can’t obtain their prosecutor files.
“These guys ain’t got no hope,” Craighead tells Metro Times. “It’s heartbreaking. Not only was a law broken, but people’s rights were violated.”
Even if the statute of limitations has expired, Craighead says, the AG’s office should still investigate to determine what happened.
“You got to find out what the hell happened,” Craighead says. “You say the statute of limitations is over. But what about the thousands of people in prison who want answers?”
Craighead says several inmates who can’t obtain their purged files also filed complaints with Nessel’s office.
AG spokesperson Danny Wimmer defended the office’s decision not to investigate.
“As we stated in our response to Mr. Craighead, this office is legally prohibited from prosecuting any individual for conduct beyond the statute of limitations,” Wimmer tells Metro Times. “When a prosecution is not possible, our office cannot launch an investigation. For instance, our typical prosecutorial tools such as investigative subpoenas and traditional subpoenas would fail to gain approval from any court given such an investigation would be predicated on allegations outside of the statute of limitations.”
Nessel worked in the prosecutor’s office under Duggan, but when asked for comment by Metro Times in October, her office said she didn’t know the records were purged.
“The Attorney General was unaware of the alleged destruction of files during her tenure at the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office,” Wimmer said.
The records contained a wealth of vital information, including police and forensic reports, lab results, transcripts, video recordings, and witness statements, all of which are essential for mounting a defense against wrongful convictions.
What makes the file purge especially concerning is that it involved records from a deeply troubling era in Detroit’s Homicide Division, a time plagued by rampant misconduct, false confessions, constitutional abuses of witnesses and suspects, and a widespread federal investigation. In the 1980s and 1990s, the misconduct among police, especially homicide detectives, was so pervasive and egregious that the U.S. Department of Justice demanded reforms to avoid a costly lawsuit while Duggan was the county prosecutor.
The two decades of misconduct produced an alarming number of wrongful convictions and false confessions, as illustrated by a spike in exonerations and court settlements stemming from that era. However, legal experts say many more innocent people are still behind bars, but the destruction of the prosecutor’s records has compromised the integrity of countless convictions, leaving some inmates without a viable path to freedom.
The purge has also impeded the work of Worthy’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which she created in 2018 to investigate claims of wrongful imprisonment.
Worthy, who replaced Duggan as prosecutor in 2004, said some of Duggan’s employees at the time “were enlisted to locate and purge the files that were on site and located in the off-site storage.” Duggan’s staff warned “that purging felony files was extremely ill advised,” according to Worthy’s office.
When Worthy became prosecutor in July 2004, she said she was notified of the purge and was “astounded.”
In a 2024 article, Worthy declined to comment when asked why she didn’t publicly reveal the file purge when she first took office.
This article was updated with a statement from the Office of the Michigan Attorney General.
