Clutch Connects — Issue 03
What the Commission Can Do
16 terms. Four hidden groups. One disputed district.
How to play: Click the terms you think belong together — selected tiles turn pink. When you think you have a group of four, reveal it using the buttons below the grid. Watch out for the disputed district: one term looks like it belongs somewhere else. Reveal the disputed district note when you’re ready.
The terms
Things the JTC can do to a judge
CENSURE • ADMONISHMENT • SUSPENSION • REMOVAL
The JTC’s formal disciplinary arsenal, from public rebuke to recommending a judge be removed from the bench.
Stages in a JTC complaint’s lifecycle
COMPLAINT • INVESTIGATION • FINDING • REFERRAL
The sequence from initial filing through investigation to a formal finding and referral to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Ways a criminal case disappears before verdict
NOLLE PROSEQUI • DIVERSION • CONTINUANCE • DISMISSAL
Mechanisms by which a prosecution ends or stalls without a trial verdict — each with different implications for the defendant’s record.
What you encounter when a case closes without disappearing
EXPUNGEMENT • VOIR DIRE • MANDATE • CONSENT ORDER
Post-disposition mechanisms and court processes that shape what a closed case leaves behind — from record-clearing to appellate directives.
The disputed district this week: DISMISSAL looks like it belongs with the JTC’s disciplinary tools — after all, the JTC regularly dismisses complaints. But in this puzzle, it belongs with the ways a criminal case disappears before verdict. Dismissal as a JTC action is a non-action (complaint found insufficient). Dismissal as a criminal case event is a case-ending procedural step. Same word, two different institutional meanings — and the group clue is about criminal cases, not the JTC.
CONTINUANCE may also trip you up: it’s a delay, not a disappearance. But a continuance granted repeatedly, without resolution, can effectively make a case go nowhere — which is why it earns its place in this group.
CONTINUANCE may also trip you up: it’s a delay, not a disappearance. But a continuance granted repeatedly, without resolution, can effectively make a case go nowhere — which is why it earns its place in this group.
From the editor
The patterns in these puzzles are fictional. The ones in Michigan’s courts aren’t. Rita maps those for a living.
