The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission filed 14-count Formal Complaint No. 108 against Judge Joseph D. Slaven of Taylor’s 23rd District Court on May 28, 2025, alleging falsified statements under oath, disrespectful conduct toward colleagues, and intentional misuse of judicial authority. Slaven’s June 20 response is a 29-page document that admits several allegations outright — including undisclosed recordings of the Chief Judge, campaigning for a friend’s judicial race, and a vehicle driven on severely expired plates for approximately a decade — while offering counterclaims about being surveilled that, even if true, would not negate the admitted conduct. The document is, in concentrated form, a window into the conditions Michigan’s judicial accountability system currently tolerates.
The Complaint: 14 Counts, Public Record
Something new emerged in the Michigan Judicial Misconduct Circus in June 2025. The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission filed Formal Complaint No. 108 against Judge Joseph D. Slaven of the 23rd District Court in Taylor, Michigan on May 28, 2025. The 14-count complaint covers a wide range of alleged misconduct, from falsified statements under oath to disrespectful behavior toward colleagues and intentional misuse of judicial authority. It is a public document and is linked in full in the sources section below.
What Slaven Admitted — And How He Explained It
Slaven’s 29-page response admits several of the allegations directly. He confirmed that he campaigned on behalf of his friend Mike Tinney in a judicial race. He confirmed that he recorded conversations with Chief Judge Victoria Shackelford without disclosing that he was doing so. He confirmed conduct that the document itself characterizes, repeatedly, as unprofessional. He confirmed sending emails to News Nation aimed at forcing out Chief Judge Shackelford.
Perhaps the most revealing admission involves vehicle registration. Slaven attributes driving a vehicle with severely expired plates — for a period of approximately a decade — to his wife Gale’s failure to renew them. The response does not acknowledge that Slaven chose to drive the vehicle to work, on roads accessible to the public, throughout that period regardless of the registration status. The admission that the plates were expired and the explanation that someone else bears responsibility for the renewal combine to produce a characterization of judicial responsibility that the JTC complaint was presumably designed to address in other contexts as well.
Slaven admitted recording conversations with Chief Judge Shackelford without disclosure — then argued in the same document that recordings of his own conduct made through the court camera system should be excluded as unauthorized surveillance. The symmetry is notable: undisclosed recording is acceptable when Slaven does it, but constitutes surveillance when it captures his conduct. The counterclaim that Chief Judge Shackelford and the court administrator surveilled him through the camera system may have a kernel of factual accuracy — the petty dynamics documented in the response do appear consistent with a contentious courthouse environment. But even if it were fully substantiated, it would not address the conduct Slaven has already admitted in writing.
The Camera Transparency Argument
The Slaven case reinforces an argument articulated in prior Clutch Justice coverage and in Hallman v. Reeds et al.: if all Michigan judges were required to be on camera with publicly accessible recordings, much of the documented misconduct in the Slaven case would have been observable and accountable in real time. The JTC process — long, opaque, and available only to parties with the standing and resources to file formal complaints — is the current alternative. The contrast between what camera transparency could produce and what the current system produces is significant, and the Slaven response illustrates it precisely. A judge comfortable enough to run a years-long campaign against the Chief Judge from inside the courthouse is not operating in an environment that reflects accountability as a daily institutional reality.
The faith in Michigan’s judiciary is eroding. Cases like Slaven’s — a sitting judge admitting undisclosed recordings, a friend’s judicial campaign, and unprofessional conduct while simultaneously claiming to be the surveillance victim in a courthouse he has treated as his personal political theater — are not isolated incidents. They are data points in a pattern. The reform argument is straightforward: mandatory judicial camera coverage with public access to recordings, FOIA applicability to the judiciary, and JTC processes that do not take years to resolve documented misconduct. The documented cases of judges who have remained on the bench while misconduct investigations have proceeded — including those documented in prior Clutch Justice coverage of Judge Hartig and others — represent the institutional cost of the current system’s pace and opacity.
It is also worth noting that Slaven appears on a YouTuber’s channel discussing his case — selectively embracing on-camera activity while arguing in his JTC response that camera recordings of his conduct should be excluded as unauthorized. Chief Judge Shackelford also appears on the same channel. No press permission filings appear on the docket for the cases discussed. The camera transparency position of judges who argue against accountability recording while voluntarily appearing on YouTube for audience purposes deserves to be noted directly.
The times are changing. Michigan’s court accountability system must change with them. As long as judges such as those documented in Clutch Justice’s ongoing coverage — including those in Barry County’s 5th Circuit Court whose documented JTC-confirmed misconduct has not prevented continued service — remain on the bench collecting taxpayer-funded paychecks while misconduct complaints move through a process the public cannot see, the erosion of confidence in Michigan’s judiciary will continue.
Primary Documents and Sources
Rita Williams, Under Judicial Investigation, Judge Joseph Slaven Responds, Clutch Justice (June 23, 2025), https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/23/under-judicial-investigation-judge-joseph-slaven-responds/.
Williams, R. (2025, June 23). Under judicial investigation, Judge Joseph Slaven responds. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/23/under-judicial-investigation-judge-joseph-slaven-responds/
Williams, Rita. “Under Judicial Investigation, Judge Joseph Slaven Responds.” Clutch Justice, 23 June 2025, clutchjustice.com/2025/06/23/under-judicial-investigation-judge-joseph-slaven-responds/.
Williams, Rita. “Under Judicial Investigation, Judge Joseph Slaven Responds.” Clutch Justice, June 23, 2025. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/23/under-judicial-investigation-judge-joseph-slaven-responds/.
