by P.D. Lesko
At a July 1, 2025 hearing, Scio Twp. Supervisor Jillian Kerry’s lawyer, R. Michael Bullotta, a former United States prosecutor in Los Angeles and Detroit took an opportunity to place on the record an accusation that 14-A1 District Judge J. Cedric Simpson had violated Kerry’s Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment Constitutional rights. Bullotta, earlier in the July 1, 2025 hearing, had accused Simpson of giving an advantage to the prosecution.
Simpson became so incensed at Bullotta’s accusation of favoritism, that the Judge jumped out of his seat and left the courtroom while announcing a recess.
Bullotta was part of the team that prosecuted Kwame Kilpatrick in a trial that resulted in a 28-year prison sentence for the former Detroit Mayor.
R. Michael Bullotta, is a soft-spoken, polite attorney with a slight stutter. The Hon. J. Cedric Simpson, is an affable and straight-shooting District Court judge with 40,000 YouTube followers. The two have clashed repeatedly during the hearings at which the Judge has sought to determine if there is sufficient evidence to have Scio Twp. Supervisor Jillian Kerry bound over to the 22nd Circuit Court on the felony charges she faces related to allegedly hacking the email account of former Scio Twp. Supervisor Will Hathaway.
At an Oct. 24, 2024 Probable Cause hearing, Bullotta said that the charges against Kerry as well as her prosecution by County Prosecutor Eli Savit, appeared to “be fishy.”
Simpson replied, “You need to be respectful of the process and the people, and I think some people don’t do that, and sometimes they don’t do that with just the words they use.” Then, Simpson read Bullotta’s filing out loud and criticized it extensively.
At an April 29, 2025 Preliminary hearing, at around 1:30 pm during Bullotta’s cross-examination of former Scio Twp. Supervisor Will Hathaway, Judge Simpson raised his voice and said to Bullotta, “We’ve been through this before, about who runs this courtroom.” Judge Simpson, furious, announced a recess and yelled at Kerry’s lawyer, “Sit down!” Judge Simpson then left the courtroom for 30 minutes.
At the Apr. 29, 2025 preliminary hearing, Simpson inserted himself into the questioning, answered Bullotta’s questions for Hathaway and frustrated Bullotta’s efforts to question Hathaway about a January 31, 2024 email in which Hathaway apologized to recipients because the email had “sent itself.” This is exactly what Kerry says happened to her when she logged onto the township’s shared laptop computer and found herself logged into Hathaway’s email account.
The July 1, 2025 hearing included similar fireworks between the Judge and Jillian Kerry’s attorney. At that hearing, for which the Judge said he had scheduled “half a day” for the questioning of Det. Dr. Kevin Parviz, the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s computer expert, Bullotta apprised the prosecution of a new report that he’d only seen the previous week. The report had been prepared by a computer expert, a Scio Twp. resident, who had contacted Kerry and had examined the evidence against her.
Bullotta did not introduce the computer expert’s report into evidence, and told Judge Simpson that he was unsure if he would call the man to the stand. Nonetheless, the Judge, after examining the report in camera, decided to postpone the hearing to give the prosecution time to examine the report. It was then that Bullotta said that in postponing the hearing Simpson was inserting himself into the proceedings, and denying Jillian Kerry the right to question Det. Dr. Parviz.
“For the record,” said Bullotta, “this adjournment is over my client’s objection.”
Judge Simpson asked for the basis of the objection and Bullotta replied, “Her Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine and confront the witness against her.”
The Judge interrupted Bullotta who then said, “I’ll let you finish. Let me know when I can talk, because I just want to make a record.”
“Yeah,” said Judge Simpson, “but you’re making a record of things that don’t exist. Are you indicating that the Court is taking away her [Kerry’s] Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine this witness?”
Bullotta replied that by “moving [adjourning] this proceeding, the Court is intervening….in a case where I was not even going to introduce the expert’s testimony or his report. So the Court is moving this to, essentially, give an advantage to the other side.”
At that point, Judge Simpson threw up his hands, jumped out of his seat and left the courtroom, calling a recess. A few minutes later, the Judge returned and allowed Bullotta to place his objections on the record.
“I think this adjournment infringes on my client’s rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Sixth Amendment being her right to confront and cross-examine accusers against her without any intervention by the Court. The other one would be the Fourteenth Amendment right for due process, for the Court to be fair and impartial. I just want to put those on the record, Your Honor, and I’m not trying to be adversarial. Thank you.”
Judge Simpson responded by explaining that it wasn’t he who had unilaterally decided to adjourn the hearing, but rather that the prosecutor had requested an adjournment, and that the request had been considered. “It was not the Court,” said the Judge, “it’s the Court decision. It was not the Court’s Motion to do it [adjourn the proceedings]. So that’s the first error that you made.” Simpson continued, “There is no violation of the Defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights, because the Court is not interfering with the right to cross-examine.”
Judge Simpson then said that in his time on the bench (25 years), no one has “said I have done anything to give one side an advantage over the other. It is not me….I call it straight down the line. You get to present your case, I make my ruling….This Court takes great offense when there is any indication that…this Court has any untoward motivation in doing what it’s doing.”
Simpson then invited Bullotta to respond “at his own peril.”
The hearing at which Bullotta will cross-examine Det. Dr. Kevin Parviz was adjourned by Judge Simpson until Aug. 12, 2025 at 2 p.m.
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