AG Dana Nessel releases Flint Water Crisis prosecution report

LANSING, Mich. (WJRT) — After a years-long investigation which ended with no criminal convictions, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has released the Flint Water Crisis Report regarding prosecution efforts.

The 105 page report shows the attorney general’s decision making, evidence and strategies to prosecute those believed to be responsible.

This was released to provide Flint residents with a fuller account of the investigation after the criminal cases ended.

“Regrettably, today, more than 10 years since the Flint Water Crisis began, the only offering I can make to the people of Flint is to give them this report, which documents what happened in their city as uncovered in the course of my office’s yearslong investigation,” said Nessel. “It is not the justice they deserve, but I hope it will offer some clarity about the decisions made by those in government who allowed the Flint Water Crisis to happen.”

According to the report, investigators generated 220 incident reports and collected 1,067 pieces of physical evidence, including 177 cell phones, 186 laptops, 103 iPads and 192 physical documents. Investigators also obtained millions of digital records during the yearslong investigation.

The Flint Water Prosecution Team conducted the investigation leading to the authorization of the one-person grand jury. In Jan. 2021, the one-person grand jury determined that probable cause was demonstrated that crimes were committed by government officials and issued indictments against nine defendants, alleging 42 criminal charges, including former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

Former state health director Nick Lyon and former chief medical executive Eden Wells were facing involuntary manslaughter charges for the people who lost their lives because of Legionnaires’ disease.

A panel of three physicians reviewed the deaths and separated the cases into groups based on whether Legionnaires’ disease directly caused, contributed to or accelerated a person’s death.

Each of those criminal cases was later dismissed following the Michigan Supreme Court ruling in People v. Peeler, a 2022 Michigan Supreme Court ruling that found a one-man grand jury process unconstitutional.

Prosecutors led by former Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy used this process to bypass the “time-consuming” process of holding preliminary hearings in district court, before sending the cases to circuit court for trial.

Defense lawyers challenged the one-man grand jury process for violating the defendants’ due process by skipping their right to a preliminary hearing, where the judge decides whether there is enough to order a trial.

After the Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear arguments in the criminal trial, Nessel said her office considers all prosecutions in the Flint Water Crisis closed.

The state was also paying the defense costs for most of those charged.

According to figures included in the report, taxpayers spent an estimated $7.6 million on defense attorneys in the Flint Water Team cases. Attorneys representing Snyder accounted for roughly $2.57 million of that total, while attorneys for Lyon received about $1.93 million.

Prosecutors concluded that restarting the remaining cases could lead to years of additional litigation, tens of millions of dollars in further costs and no guarantee that any case would ever reach a jury.

The report contains documentation of the investigation, but multiple things had to be redacted. According to Nessel, the redactions were made in compliance with Michigan Law, which prohibits the release of information exclusively presented before a one-person grand jury.

In 2019, upon taking office, Nessel implemented a conflict wall to ensure the criminal investigation and civil litigation following the Flint Water Crisis were conducted by completely separate teams. She had no operational involvement with the criminal prosecutions and focused her efforts on the civil litigation, which resulted in the affected people of Flint receiving the largest civil settlement in the history of the state. Nessel began her term starting a new investigation after former Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette began an investigation in 2016. 

On April 25, 2014, the city of Flint transitioned its water supply from Detroit to the Flint River. The switch caused the water distribution pipes to corrode, causing lead to pollute people’s drinking water.

“As a lifelong Flint resident, husband, father, neighbor and Mayor, it is deeply disappointing that there will be no criminal trial and no verdict holding those directly responsible accountable for their actions,” Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley said. “The people of Flint deserved accountability. They deserved answers. And they deserved to see those responsible answer for the decisions that put their health, their families at risk.”

“There is still work that should be done, but unfortunately, those responsible for this horrific crisis will never have to answer for the harm they caused,” Neeley said. “That is a hard reality for the people of Flint to accept. But we cannot allow the failure to achieve criminal accountability to erase the progress this community has made.”