Wrongful Convictions

July 11, 2026

When Does Excluding Evidence Violate the Right to Present a Defense in a Michigan CSC Case?

Karl Butler was charged in Kalamazoo County with five counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of home invasion over a 2009 incident. He admitted the sexual contact and said it was consensual. His defense turned on evidence that the complainant had accused two other men of sexual assault in 2008, and that the accusation was false: the defense had statements from the two men and police reports on the earlier investigation.

The pretrial fight over that evidence consumed years. The trial court first denied the motion to admit it. On a renewed motion, the court changed course and ruled that the testimony could come in, but it never first held the closed evidentiary hearing Michigan law requires. The Court of Appeals reversed and held the evidence should be excluded. In March 2024, the Michigan Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, vacated that decision too. Both lower courts had skipped the required step: once the defense produced some apparently credible and potentially admissible evidence that the earlier allegation was false, the trial court had to hold an in camera evidentiary hearing before deciding anything about admissibility.

People v. Butler is one recent answer to a question that runs through nearly every Michigan criminal sexual conduct prosecution: when does the exclusion of defense evidence cross the line from ordinary evidence law into a violation of the constitutional right to present a defense? The Michigan Supreme Court has confronted that question twice in two years, in Butler and in the 2025 rape-shield decision People v. Masi, and the Court of Appeals added a published decision on records discovery, People v. Leonard, in June 2026.

June 3, 2011

Kent County Rape Conviction To Be Reviewed Due To Unfair Jury Pool

by Scott Grabel

Grand Rapids news reports that the Michigan Supreme Court will review the trial of a man convicted of a raping a woman at gun-point. In 2002, a Kent County jury convicted Ramon Bryant for an alleged rape and armed robbery he committed at age 16.

However, as the result of computer glitch the jury pool only included one black. The constitution guarantees individuals the right to trial by a jury of your peers. Here, the Supreme Court will consider whether the disproportionate number of non-black jurors to black jurors deprived Bryant of this right.

If you have been charged with a Michigan sex crime, it is important to contact an experienced Michigan sex crimes defense lawyer to provide a vigorous defense and protect your constitutional rights.

The computer glitch occurred between 2001 and 2002. A juror selection program identified too few jurors from certain zip codes that had high minority populations. Although no one has the right to have the jury made up of one particular group, the jury must represent a fair cross section of the community. The glitch – even if unintentional – may have created an unfair jury pool, resulting in an unfair conviction.

September 29, 2010

Man Exonerated Of Rape After Serving 10 Years In Prison

by Scott Grabel

Earlier this week a 39-year-old Dallas,Texas man – Stephen Brodie – was exonerated
of the rape of a 5-year-old girl after a judge determined he was innocent. He was released the next day, and his dad was there to greet him as he exited the jail.

On Monday, a judge ruled Brodie had been wrongly prosecuted despite a lack of physical evidence. In many states, including Michigan, individuals may be convicted of criminal sexual conduct without any physical evidence of an assault or any other supporting evidence. Here, not only was there no evidence, but prosecutors had contradictory hair and finger print evidence that conclusively excluded Brodie as the perpetrator, yet they failed to turn this evidence over to his defense attorney. Police officers also knew that a fingerprint found at the victim’s home did not match Brodie’s.

The Dallas County District Attorney’s office issued an apology this week.

Deaf since childhood, Brodie’s imprisonment was largely a result of a confession he gave after being questioned for hours without an interpreter. Studies by the Innocence Project show that in many cases, innocent people confess during police interrogation as a result of duress, coercion, diminished capacity, and ignorance of the law. Brodie later told The Associated Press he had felt scared and pressured. The judge admitted the confession, and believing it the best option, Brodie pleaded guilty to assault and accepted a five-year sentence. He then served two additional sentences for failure to register as a sex offender. Now that he has been exonerated, Brodie no longer needs to place his name of the sex crimes registry.

Tragically, Brodie spent 10 years of his life behind bars as the result of a crime he didn’t commit. Experts estimate that nearly 5,000 wrongfully convicted men and woman are locked up today in Michigan’s prisons.