Note: The A2Indy FOIA Fund has taken in over $40,000 in 2024. The newspaper uses this fund to pay to obtain public records. This is the newspaper’s first lawsuit against Washtenaw County for refusing to turn over public records.

On June 3, 2024, the Ann Arbor Independent filed a FOIA appeal lawsuit in the Washtenaw County Trial Court against Washtenaw County. The suit was filed to compel the County to release the background check done on Sheriff’s Deputy, and alleged serial rapist D’Angelo McWilliams, prior to his hiring in May 2019.

On March 25, 2024, The Ann Arbor Independent submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the County Sheriff’s Dept. to obtain a copy of the background check done on Sheriff’s Deputy D’Angelo Ladonn McWilliams prior to his hiring. McWilliams is an alleged rapist awaiting trial. The request was denied: “…In accordance with MCL 15.243 Sec.13(1)(a) information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy and MCL 15.243 Sec. 13(1)(s)(ix) disclose personnel records of law enforcement agencies. This pertains to the background check done on D’Angelo McWilliams. The public’s interest does not outweigh the privacy of the individual.”

This refusal to turn over the record is evidence that the document exists.

From the newspaper’s Trial Court filing: “The Plaintiff’s March 25, 2024 request was made to educate the public on the workings of County government, including holding accountable an elected official and a County employee whose actions related to the production and use of the requested public record occurred in the course of performing their official duties.”

The newspaper’s argument is that thanks to his status as a public employee and his prosecution by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor and then the Michigan Attorney General, the Defendant (Washtenaw County) has already stripped McWilliams of his privacy:

1. The Trial Court records have made information public that, under other circumstances, would be an invasion of Mr. McWilliams privacy. This includes confidential information about his sex life, the names of women whom he alleges were his willing sexual partners, and his alleged sexual proclivities.
2.  Trial Court records include his driver’s license number, sex, race, birthday, height, and weight.
3. His present alleged crimes, charges, prosecution details, alleged victim testimony, investigating detective testimony, and court pleadings, including petitions to travel out-of-state that would allow his movements to be tracked, are available in Washtenaw Trial Court records.

The newspaper appealed the denial, but County Administrator Greg Dill upheld his decision to withhold the public record. The State FOIA statute allows an appeal to the local Trial Court of such denials within 180 days from a governmental entity’s final denial of an appeal.

Sources within the Sheriff’s Dept. told The Ann Arbor Independent that in May 2019, D’Angelo McWilliams underwent a background check prior to being hired.

Various sources inside and outside the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Dept. have said McWilliams’s background check was done by a temporary County Sheriff’s Dept. Support Staff worker named Lisa Billig.

County records show between May 5, 2019 and May 31, 2019 background investigation contractor Lisa Billig was paid a total of $2,876.28 for her “advice.”

A retired Ypsilanti Police Detective who spoke with Billig about the McWilliams hiring said Billig’s investigation had turned up “red flags.” Billig reportedly contacted Brian Miller, the Sheriff’s Special Investigator for Professional Standards, and informed him of the “red flags.” The former Ypsilanti Police Detective said Sheriff candidate Derrick Jackson had also been made aware of the troubling findings in McWilliams’s background check, but Jackson brushed off the concerns raised in Billig’s background check.

In Aug. 2023 when McWilliams was charged and arraigned, the County Sheriff and his Dir. of Community Engagement told the public through the media they’d had no inkling of McWilliams’s “crimes” before he was hired.

The Background check will either confirm this public assertion, or show that Sheriff Clayton and Derrick Jackson were aware of the fact McWilliams had been investigated as a serial rapist by officials at Eastern Michigan University, hired him anyway, and then lied to the public after the fact to cover up their mistake.

Like D’Angelo McWilliams, the County’s Racial Equity Officer Alize Asberry Payne also underwent a “background check” by Brian Miller who runs the Sheriff’s “Special Investigations Unit.” The Ann Arbor Independent uncovered that while a candidate for the job, Asberry Payne was the subject of an open arrest warrant for failure to appear in a California Superior Court on charges of financial crimes. The Sheriff’s background check of Asberry Payne failed to find that she had falsified large portions of her job application and her resume, including never having graduated with a four-year degree, the minimum qualification for the job for which she was eventually hired.