Michigan to hunt down sexual offenders who fled the state

This story was originally published by the Michigan Advance.

A new $1 million program out of the Michigan Attorney General’s Office seeks to remove barriers for county prosecutors to take sexual predators to court when the perpetrator has left the state.

Extraditing those who commit sexual crimes in Michigan from out of state can cost counties thousands of dollars to hire private companies to bring someone back for one case, but Branch County Prosecutor Zachary Stempien said during a news conference in Lansing Wednesday that his county’s extradition budget for the year is just $500.

The Attorney General’s Office’s new Operation Survivor Justice program offers new hope for crime victims by connecting county prosecutors to federal resources and state funding to bring perpetrators back to Michigan for prosecution.

“When you have a warrant that’s been out there for five or six years, victims start to think, ‘my perpetrator is never going to be caught. This case is never going to go anywhere,’” Stempien said. “So when we’re finally able to tell them we found them, we’re bringing them back, our victims, they’re very excited they’re very relieved.”

Earlier this summer, as Operation Survivor Justice was operating but not publicized, U.S. Marshals were able to bring a man charged with sexually assaulting two children in Branch County back to Michigan from Mexico, WoodTV reports. The charges date back to 2019 and Stempien said he’ll never forget the feeling of getting the text that the defendant was going to be brought back to Michigan for prosecution.

“I think at the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. It’s not about the Branch County Prosecutor’s Office getting a conviction, or the Attorney General getting a conviction. It’s about the state of Michigan getting a conviction and making sure that people who are perpetrators are held accountable,” Stempien said.

And now that Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a $1 million allocation in the state budget to fund the program last month, the Attorney General’s office looks forward to publicizing the program, Criminal Justice Bureau Chief Danielle Hagaman-Clark said during the Wednesday news conference. She added that the goal is to get extraditions for every single one of the over 800 identified cases that U.S. Marshalls have identified as eligible for the program in the next three years, with cases dating back to 1984.

The program isn’t aimed to present new charges, instead it’s structured to supplement county prosecutors’ efforts to prosecute already charged defendants where the victim still wishes to pursue the matter in court and any witnesses are willing to testify. Cases eligible for the program include physical contact-based sexual offenses like criminal sexual conduct, but also accosting a minor for immoral purposes.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Operation Survivor Justice was born out of lessons learned in the state from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, or SAKI, wherein Michigan has tested thousands of years-old untested sexual assault forensic evidence kits and sought out convictions. Through the SAKI program, in one case when a member of the Attorney General’s Office in Kalamazoo partnered with U.S. Marshals to track down a suspect identified by an evidence kit who had fled the state, conversations were sparked on how federal partners can help Michigan pursue justice for hundreds of sexual assault victims.

“We’re prioritizing sexual assault again in this department, and we’ve done that time and time again because we understand the nature of sexual assault crimes, how they impact victims, how they impact society. We talk about the cost of extraditing defendants back to Michigan. I think one of the things people don’t recognize is the cost to an individual who has been victimized for this particular type of crime,” Nessel said.

Additionally, many sexual violence offenders who evade accountability reoffend, Nessel said, so bringing swift justice overall minimizes harm to the state.

On Tuesday, the Michigan Attorney General’s Office announced that the SAKI program had led to a 34-year-old man to plead guilty earlier this month in Kalamazoo to two counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct in the 1st degree. The assault took place at Western Michigan University in 2010 where the man and the female victim were students at the time. 

The victim did not pursue charges at the time due to campus police’s reaction to her reporting the assault, the attorney general’s office said in a news release and the evidence kit, submitted for testing in 2016 through SAKI, did not identify the defendant. However, through the course of the investigation, six other women came forward with their stories of assault by the man between 2009 and 2014 in Kalamazoo, Oakland and Ingham counties.   

When looking at the more than 800 cases that have been deemed eligible, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey S. Getting said it can’t be ignored that this program represents real cases and real people who have been victimized in horrific ways.

“There’s nothing that we do as prosecutors that’s more important than what we do on behalf of our victims, and when we are able to bring together the resources that are necessary, that will make it better for those victims, we have an obligation to do that,” Getting said.

Now it’s up to county prosecutors to engage and set “egos to the side” and ask for help in bringing defendants back to Michigan for prosecution, said Getting, who is also president of the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan.

As the SAKI program in Michigan engaged state and federal partners to bring justice to cold case sexual violence cases, the state learned that when prosecutors have the resources, they get results, Getting said.

“Recognizing that those resources when they are available to the Office of the Attorney General, when they are available to local prosecutor offices, can be put to use in a way that does bring justice on behalf of survivors, I think is maybe the most important lesson of all from that project,” Getting said. “Operation Survivor Justice is a great example of how that lesson is being applied today.”

This story's headline was written by Route Fifty.