Michigan Civil Rights & Product Liability Law Blog

The first woman in Michigan to be exonerated and released following a wrongful conviction has told her story at the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School's Auburn Hills campus. In 2003, she was going through the process to adopt her infant nephew when she took him to the emergency room because he was not eating and was bleeding in his brain.

The woman did not know that she was under suspicion for child abuse when she was questioned by law enforcement several days later and did not realize that she might need an attorney. In February 2004, she was charged with first degree child abuse, and in 2005 she was convicted. The prosecution had successfully argued that the baby was injured by shaken baby syndrome, and she was sentenced to a prison term of 10 to 15 years.

A bill introduced into Michigan's state legislature would provide an additional $10 million for the state's compensation fund for wrongfully convicted prisoners. The fund is at risk of running out of money, despite the fact that more wrongful convictions continue to be exposed. Rep. Steve Johnson of Wayland introduced House Bill 4286 in order to provide additional funds to the account created in 2016 as part of the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act.

According to the Michigan Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act ("WICA"), former prisoners who were wrongfully convicted should receive $50,000 for every year they spent behind bars. However, officials said in early 2019 that only $1.6 million remains in the account. There are a number of claims on the fund still pending, and ex-prisoners say they are owed more than this amount. Johnson said that the law was an important step but reliable funding was necessary in order to make its provisions viable.

Vape pens or e-cigarettes have become mainstream throughout Michigan, but malfunctions of the battery-operated devices can prove fatal. A recent out-of-state case illustrates the severity of injuries that defective e-cigarettes can deliver. The explosion of a vape pen caused cerebral infarction and herniation after debris dissected a 24-year-old man's carotid artery. He reportedly died in a hospital two days after the explosion.

His relatives told the media that medical staff placed the man in a medically induced coma. His X-rays showed that parts of the vape pen had lodged in his throat. His grandmother did not know why surgery was not attempted for him. A spokeswoman from the medical center could not provide a public comment due to health privacy laws.

E-cigarettes became very popular because of their ability to be used in places where smoking was banned. This helped people who were affected by smoking bans continue to get the nicotine they were addicted to without gums, patches or other treatments.

E-cigarettes also had the benefit of being ideal for curing the smell of smoke. They pose less threat to those around the smoker (though this does not make second-hand smoke "safe"), and they don't produce the smell of cigarette smoke that so many people don't like.