by P.D. Lesko

On June 3, 2024, the Ann Arbor Independent filed a FOIA 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. Washtenaw County hired Detroit law firm Miller Johnson. Washtenaw County online checkbook records for 2024 and 2025 show that between July 2024 and February 2025, Washtenaw County spent over $10,000 in taxpayer funds to pay Miller Johnson to fight the newspaper’s FOIA, and then to appeal its loss at the Trial Court level to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

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 was evidence that the document existed.

In its Sept. 2024 Motion for Summary Disposition, the Miller Johnson attorney asked Judge Owdziej to dismiss the newspaper’s FOIA suit prior to the Court applying required balancing tests (the public’s interest versus the privacy of a Sheriff’s deputy who had been put on unpaid leave in August 2020) and reviewing the requested record in camera. Had the Judge done so, she would have ignored decades of FOIA rulings by the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court.

On Sept. 18, 2024, Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge Julia B. Owdziej granted the newspaper’s Motion for Summary Disposition and ordered Washtenaw County to redact and release the requested record by Nov. 12, 2024. The County’s Miller Johnson attorney, Josh Apel, filed a Motion in which he asked Judge Owdziej to reconsider her order. His Motion was denied.

In the Miller Johnson November 12, 2024 Motion to Reconsider, Apel attached as an exhibit the Judge’s copy of the records which had directions for redactions, but with the redactions as yet undone. The newspaper published the records on Dec. 10, 2024. “County Sheriff and Dir. of Engagement Lied, Knew About Deputy’s Background Check Rape Investigations.”

On Dec. 13, 2024, Miller Johnson filed an appeal of Owdziej’s orders with the Michigan Court of Appeals arguing the County should never have been ordered to release the McWilliams background report, even though it was the Miller Johnson attorney who had released the record requested in the newspaper’s FOIA request.

The records confirmed that Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton, who at a press conference in August 2020 purported to have known nothing about the Deputy’s “crimes,” had a background report which had included two investigations into the as-yet-unhired man’s involvement in two rape investigations.

At a January 2025 hearing, the Miller Johnson attorney asked Judge Owdziej to force the A2Indy to unpublish the Dec. 10, 2024 article. What the Miller Johnson attorney asked Judge Owdziej to grant was unconstitutional restraint of the media which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against five times since 1931. The judge refused to do so.

Miller Johnson’s Court of Appeals Brief argues Judge Owdziej abused her discretion by reviewing the requested record in chambers, ordering portions of the requested record redacted by County officials, then returned to her for for release. The law firm’s appeal Brief withheld the facts from the Court of Appeals that their firm had released the requested record to the newspaper as an exhibit in a public court filing, and that the record had been published.

Since the background report was released to the requester, made public and published, no further judicial controversy remains. Michigan’s higher courts don’t hear FOIA cases where the record has been released by the government, in this case by its own attorney. FOIA is a pro-plaintiff statute and release of the record ends the requestor’s FOIA claim.