Quick Facts
A: Robert Steinhoff is the Alger County Prosecutor who recently sought extraordinary relief against an 11th Circuit judge while now actively campaigning for a judgeship himself.
A: Because prosecutors are not neutral actors. When prosecutors police judges for being “too adversarial” while pursuing judicial office, it raises serious concerns about selective enforcement and conflicts of interest.
A: No. It reflects a broader pattern in Michigan where prosecutorial power is lightly scrutinized while judicial independence is tightly constrained.
A: A system that chills judicial independence in favor of prosecutorial comfort undermines the adversarial balance required by the Sixth Amendment.
How Does Michigan’s Judicial Accountability System Keep Tilting Toward the Prosecution?
Robert Steinhoff, sitting Alger County Prosecutor, recently sought extraordinary relief against Judge Brian Rahilly, arguing that the judge’s private communications raised concerns about impartiality. As a result, Judge Rahilly was reassigned from certain cases as a procedural safeguard.
Separately, Steinhoff is now publicly campaigning for a judgeship, presenting himself as a candidate committed to “fairness, integrity, and public trust in the courts.“
Both of these facts can be true at the same time, but that overlap is precisely the issue we need to examine.
Prosecutors Are NOT Neutral Arbiters of Judicial Conduct
Michigan prosecutors exercise extraordinary discretion. They decide who is charged, how cases are framed, what pleas are offered, and what sentences are sought. They are repeat players with institutional memory, political incentives, and career trajectories that often include seeking the bench themselves.
And in Michigan, they all seem to have a nasty habit of overcharging to grow their office (or in some cases, selective charging).
That makes prosecutors uniquely ill-suited to act as informal enforcers of judicial behavior, something you can see in action here.
This does not require allegations of bad faith. The structural conflict exists regardless of intent. When a prosecutor moves to sideline a judge for being insufficiently accommodating, while simultaneously positioning himself as a future judge, the enforcement of “integrity” stops looking neutral and starts looking strategic.
Yes, judicial accountability matters. But who enforces it, and under what conditions, matters just as much.
Adversarial Judges Are Not the Problem
Judges and prosecutors are not meant to be collaborators. They are adversaries by design. Judges are supposed to:
- Question charging decisions
- Push back on plea practices
- Resist pressure for speed over fairness
A judge who never irritates prosecutors is not necessarily impartial. In many systems, it is the opposite.
What makes the Rahilly episode instructive is not that concerns were raised, but how quickly judicial independence became framed as a liability, while prosecutorial discretion remained largely unquestioned.
That imbalance is not accidental. It reflects years of normalized institutional closeness between prosecutors and courts.
Let’s Examine the Pattern
Michigan has a documented history of uneven responses to judicial conduct depending on who directly benefits.
Judges who are too close to prosecutors have been cited for misconduct yet allowed to remain on the bench without meaningful consequence (see Judge Margaret Zuzich Bakker). But Judges who create friction for prosecutors are treated as risks to system integrity.
That is not at all what I would consider principled oversight. Rather, it is selective enforcement.
When accountability mechanisms activate primarily when prosecutorial comfort is threatened, the message to the judiciary is clear: independence comes at a cost.
The Chilling Effect on the Bench
Allowing prosecutors who aspire to judgeships to play a central role in disciplining or sidelining sitting judges creates a chilling effect.
Judges notice.
Defense attorneys notice.
Defendants feel the consequences.
The lesson becomes implicit but powerful: challenge prosecutorial power too openly, and your career becomes precarious. Align with it, and advancement remains possible.
That dynamic does not strengthen public trust. It corrodes it.
An Ethical Problem the System Cannot Ignore
There is also an ethical dimension here that has not been adequately addressed.
By seeking extraordinary relief against Judge Rahilly while actively running for a judgeship, Robert Steinhoff effectively took legal action that disadvantaged a sitting judge who occupies the same professional space he now seeks to enter. In practical terms, he authored a writ against his competition.
Even if every procedural step was technically permissible, the appearance problem is significant.
Judicial ethics are built not only around actual impropriety, but around avoiding situations that reasonably call neutrality into question. That standard should apply equally to those who seek judicial office. When a prosecutor who is a declared judicial candidate initiates extraordinary measures that sideline a judge, the overlap between enforcement and self-interest becomes unavoidable.
This is not about intent. It is about incentive.
A system that allows a judicial candidate to help remove a sitting judge from cases, particularly high-profile or politically sensitive ones, without clear firewalls or recusal standards, invites skepticism about whether accountability tools are being used to protect integrity or to reshape the field.
Ethical safeguards exist precisely to prevent this kind of entanglement. When they are absent or ignored, public confidence suffers, regardless of how defensible the underlying legal arguments may be.
Consider that I’m not even on the same peninsula and I’m giving Steinhoff the side eye.
Judicial accountability cannot be credible if it permits candidates for the bench to participate directly in actions that weaken or displace those already serving on it.
Why This Escalates the Conflict of Interest
Layer this onto the fact that the prosecutor who sought the writ is actively running for a judgeship, and the problem compounds.
If a judge is removed from high-profile or emotionally resonant cases while a prosecutorial challenger positions himself as the alternative, the accountability mechanism itself becomes entangled with electoral advantage. Even if no one intended that result, the structure permits it.
That is precisely what judicial oversight systems are meant to prevent.
Judicial accountability cannot be credible if:
- enforcement varies by county,
- consequences vary by case,
- and the initiator of enforcement stands to gain politically from the disruption.
At that point, the question is no longer whether a judge’s private texts were appropriate, let alone any of Steinhoff’s business at all (which they weren’t). The question is who decides which cases require purity, and who benefits when a judge is removed from them.
When the Conflict Moved Into the Courtroom
The tensions underlying this dispute did not remain abstract or procedural. They surfaced directly in open court.
In a subsequent courtroom hearing, multiple defense attorneys publicly pushed back against the effort to remove Judge Rahilly from cases, characterizing the prosecutor’s actions as targeted and disproportionate. Rather than quietly accepting the narrative that judicial reassignment was a neutral housekeeping measure, counsel framed it as an aggressive intervention driven by prosecutorial dissatisfaction with an adversarial judge.
What unfolded was effectively a courtroom showdown over who gets to define bias.
Defense attorneys argued that judicial skepticism of prosecutorial practices does not equal partiality, and that disagreement, even sharp disagreement, is inherent to the adversarial system. They warned that equating adversarial posture with disqualifying bias risks transforming judicial independence into a punishable offense whenever it inconveniences the prosecution.
The prosecutor, for his part, doubled down on claims that the judge’s conduct crossed an ethical line, reinforcing the position that extraordinary relief was necessary to preserve integrity. The exchange laid bare the deeper issue at play: not merely whether a judge’s tone was appropriate, but whether prosecutorial comfort is being treated as the benchmark for neutrality.
The fact that this debate even had to be litigated in open court underscores how far beyond routine ethics review this situation has moved. It is no longer just about private texts or professional decorum. It is about whether adversarial judging itself is being reframed as institutional risk, and whether thin-skinned prosecutors are being empowered to police the boundaries of judicial independence through procedural escalation.
That moment matters, because it reveals that this is not a dispute about one judge’s conduct alone. It is a live conflict over power, boundaries, and who controls the narrative of “bias” in Michigan’s criminal courts.
And with Steinhoff whipping out press releases and inviting reporters to hearings, you clearly have your answer.
Further, Mathieu blamed the accusation Rahilly exhibited an appearance of impropriety on Steinhoff himself, who publicized the text messages.
“As far as the appearance of impropriety, there would be none had he not filed a press release that included all the text messages the very moment he was able to do that,” said Mathieu.
Ending her statements, Mathieu went so far as to request sanctions against Steinhoff.
“The reason I’m asking for sanctions, Your Honor, is because of the prosecutor’s obvious goal in filing this — which is to launch his own campaign for your job,” said Mathieu. “I find that offensive. I find it to be a violation of due process.”
The Case Context Changes Everything
The situation becomes more serious once the specific cases affected are taken into account. Reporting now confirms that Judge Rahilly was removed from the bench in Mackinac County, but not Alger County, despite the same underlying text messages. That distinction was not explained by a difference in conduct, but by jurisdictional choice.
In other words, the system determined where his presence was suddenly intolerable and where it was still acceptable. That alone raises questions.
More importantly, a category of offense can be politically and emotionally charged, particularly in small communities. Decisions about judicial assignment in cases like that do not occur in a vacuum. They shape public narratives about accountability, responsibility, and justice.
When a judge is pulled from a subset of cases, but allowed to remain on others, the question is no longer about judicial tone. It becomes about which outcomes required containment, and why. Selective removal functions differently than full reassignment. It signals that the concern is not universal impartiality, but specifics.
That matters when the prosecutor seeking extraordinary relief is also a judicial candidate.
Containment, Not Neutral Oversight
What emerges from the reporting is a pattern of surgical intervention, not systemic concern.
Judge Rahilly was deemed unfit for certain cases in one county, yet fit to continue presiding elsewhere. The same texts were treated as disqualifying in one venue and tolerable in another. That inconsistency undermines the claim that this was a purely ethics-driven response.
Instead, it reads as containment.
Containment protects:
- particular cases,
- particular optics,
- and particular institutional interests.
It does not resemble even-handed due process.
When judicial accountability is applied selectively based on case type, jurisdiction, or political sensitivity, it ceases to be about integrity and starts looking like risk management.
The Campaign Advantage No One Is Naming
There is an unavoidable electoral dimension to this situation that warrants scrutiny.
Depending on which cases Judge Rahilly was removed from, the extraordinary relief sought has the potential to function as a significant campaign advantage for the prosecutor who initiated it, but a warped form of venue shopping.
When a sitting judge is sidelined under the banner of “integrity” or “impartiality,” the prosecutor who pushed for that outcome can position himself publicly as the responsible adult in the room, the defender of standards, and the corrective force restoring order.
That narrative is powerful in a judicial election.
It allows a candidate to cast himself as the solution to a problem he himself created, particularly if the cases involved were politically sensitive, high-profile, or emotionally charged. Even absent any improper intent, the optics matter. Judicial accountability mechanisms should not double as campaign assets, nor should extraordinary procedural interventions reshape the electoral landscape without serious reflection.
This is precisely why guardrails matter. When a prosecutor who is actively seeking a judgeship plays a decisive role in removing a sitting judge from cases, the overlap between oversight and ambition becomes impossible to ignore. The risk is not just selective enforcement, but selective advantage, where process decisions reverberate beyond the courtroom and into the ballot box.
If Michigan wants judicial elections that are fair, credibility-based, and insulated from strategic maneuvering, it must confront how easily accountability tools can be perceived as political leverage when applied unevenly or without clear separation from prosecutorial ambition.
And all of that is before we even talk about the use of public office resources for Steinhoff’s personal gain.
This Is No Longer About One Judge
With the addition of case-specific context, this episode stops being about personality, professionalism, or tone. It becomes about selective due process in action.
A system that:
- tolerates the same conduct in one jurisdiction but not another,
- intervenes only where exposure is highest,
- and allows prosecutorial ambition to intersect with judicial reassignment,
is not enforcing standards evenly. It is managing outcomes.
And once the public sees that, trust does not erode gradually. It collapses.
A Standard That Cuts Both Ways
There is another risk embedded in the position being taken here, one that has received little attention.
By elevating private text messages into a basis for extraordinary relief, Steinhoff is implicitly endorsing a standard that does not stop at the judiciary. Prosecutors are not insulated from scrutiny of their own private communications, particularly when those communications bear on professionalism, bias, or respect for opposing parties.
In public remarks, Steinhoff has stated that he has never called a judge or another attorney a derogatory name in private communications. That may well be true. But once private texts become fair game as a measure of fitness, such claims are no longer rhetorical. They become testable, given the right circumstances, discovery posture, or public records exposure.
This is not a threat. It is a structural reality.
Standards, once normalized, tend to travel. A system that treats private judicial communications as disqualifying evidence cannot plausibly argue that prosecutorial communications should remain categorically off-limits, especially when prosecutors wield far greater discretionary power over outcomes.
If accountability is going to hinge on private tone rather than public conduct, it must be applied evenly. Otherwise, the message becomes clear: scrutiny flows downward toward the bench, but not laterally toward the prosecution.
That imbalance is not sustainable. And it risks opening a broader conversation that prosecutors may not ultimately control.
Why This Case Matters
This is not about whether Robert Steinhoff should or should not become a judge.
It is about whether Michigan is comfortable with a system where prosecutorial ambition and judicial oversight intersect without meaningful guardrails.
Judicial accountability cannot be credible if it flows disproportionately through actors who benefit from suppressing adversarial independence when they don’t get their way. Due process requires not only rules, but structural fairness in how those rules are applied.
Until Michigan confronts that imbalance directly, judicial accountability will continue to feel selective, political, and tilted toward the prosecution.
It is equal parts perplexing and annoying to me that any prosecutor would not just behave this way, but wonder why any judge would refer to him in private as a “douchebag” and take great offense after. It’s like forcing someone to give you a copy of their diary, reading it, and then getting mad when you find out that they called you names.
The Verdict
Judges and prosecutors are supposed to be separate.
They are supposed to clash.
They are supposed to check each other’s power.
When prosecutors who seek the robe are empowered to sideline judges for being too adversarial, the system is no longer protecting integrity. It is protecting comfort.
And prosecutorial comfort has never been a constitutionally protected value.
Sources
- Perkins, Schyler, Courtroom Showdown: Biased Judge Targted by Prosecutor with Obvious Goal, https://www.myupnow.com/news/courtroom-showdown-lawyers-defend-biased-judge-targeted-by-prosecutor-with-obvious-goal/article_791d4154-c492-4098-a05b-353cb5f752d4.html
