Jillian Kerry, Scio Township Supervisor, has waived her right to a jury and will face a bench trial on June 29, 2026 before Washtenaw County 22nd Circuit Court Judge Jinan Hamood on two felony computer crime charges. The police report documenting the November 2023 incident does not support the prosecution’s theory. Kerry did not break into any system, circumvent any password, or take any action outside what a shared machine with an authenticated open session does automatically. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor is proceeding anyway, at public expense, in a case that should never have been charged.
What exactly is Kerry charged with?
Two felony counts: using a computer to commit a crime under MCL 752.797, and interfering with electronic communications under MCL 750.540. Both stem from a November 2023 incident in which Hathaway’s outbox sent emails while his authenticated session was open on a shared community computer Kerry used for a Zoom meeting.
What does the police report say?
The police report documenting the incident does not support the prosecution’s theory. It describes conduct consistent with using a shared machine with an active, authenticated session belonging to someone else — not unauthorized access, not system interference, not a deliberate forward. The report exonerates Kerry on the core conduct alleged, and the prosecution has it.
Why did Kerry choose a bench trial?
Kerry waived her jury right on May 18, 2026. Judge Jinan Hamood of the 22nd Circuit Court will decide the case. This is a dispute about statutory interpretation — whether conduct involving a shared machine and an open session meets the legal threshold of “interference” or “unauthorized access” — and that question is better suited to a judge than a jury asked to evaluate technical facts without legal training.
Should Hathaway face charges for the original complaint?
If the police report confirms no unauthorized conduct by Kerry, then the complaint that initiated this prosecution describes criminal conduct the record does not support. Filing a police report alleging a crime that the reporter’s own operational security failure caused — and that the responding agency’s own documentation does not substantiate — raises questions about good faith. Those questions are legitimate and have not been examined publicly.
What happens next?
A bench trial before Judge Hamood in Washtenaw County 22nd Circuit Court. Watch for how the court defines “interference” under MCL 750.540 — specifically whether the definition requires documented disruption of communications infrastructure or can be applied to an outbox send from an authenticated open session. That statutory interpretation question is the whole case.
On May 18, 2026, Jillian Kerry waived her right to a jury trial. The case against the Scio Township Supervisor — two felony computer crime counts stemming from a November 2023 incident involving a shared office computer — will be decided by Washtenaw County 22nd Circuit Court Judge Jinan Hamood in a bench trial beginning June 29, 2026, the judge’s staff confirmed to MLive/The Ann Arbor News.
MLive is describing the matter as Kerry “illegally forwarding an email from a former township supervisor’s account without his authorization.” That framing is wrong in a way that matters. It treats an automated function — an outbox delivering queued messages when a machine is in use — as a volitional act by Kerry. She did not forward anything. Former Supervisor William Hathaway left his Office365 session authenticated and his outbox loaded on a shared community computer. Kerry used that computer for a Zoom meeting. The outbox sent. That is what outbox emails do when a session is active and a machine is used. The distinction between those two descriptions of the same event is the entire legal dispute, and it is going to be resolved by a judge who, unlike a jury, is equipped to parse what “unauthorized access” and “interference with electronic communications” actually require under Michigan law.
A bench trial is not vindication of the charges. It is a procedural setting in which a legally trained decision-maker will now be asked to determine whether the statutes the prosecution is relying on actually reach the conduct described. The statutory fit problem identified in April has not been resolved by months of additional pretrial litigation. It is being handed to a judge.
What Actually Happened on November 15, 2023
Kerry attempted to log in to a shared community computer for a Zoom meeting. Hathaway had left his Office365 account authenticated on that machine, with emails sitting in his outbox. Those emails sent. No system was broken into. No password was circumvented. No data was exfiltrated. An already-authenticated session did what it was configured to do when a machine was used.
The police report documenting this incident does not support the prosecution’s theory. It describes exactly the sequence above: a shared machine, an open session, an outbox delivering queued mail. That report exists. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office has it. The decision to file felony charges — and to push those charges through a motion to quash, multiple preliminary examination transcripts, a judicial reassignment, and now to trial — was made with that document in hand.
The complaint that initiated this prosecution originates with or through William Hathaway, whose failure to log out of his Office365 session on a shared township computer is the cause of the entire incident. If the police report confirms Kerry took no unauthorized action — and it does — then the complaint attributes criminal conduct to behavior the complainant’s own operational security failure produced. Filing a police report alleging a crime that the record does not support raises questions about whether the filing was made in good faith. Those questions are legitimate. Charges for making a false police report and for malicious prosecution are mechanisms that exist precisely because the power to initiate a criminal complaint carries a corresponding responsibility to do so in good faith. That accountability mechanism has not been applied here. It should be examined.
Why the Charges Still Do Not Hold Up
Michigan’s interference statute, MCL 750.540, targets conduct like disrupting communications infrastructure, making unauthorized connections to systems, and impairing transmission. The computer crime charge under MCL 752.797 is a multiplier count layered on top of a predicate offense. If the underlying interference theory is weak, the dependent charge inherits that weakness. In practice, the statute allows conviction on the computer crime count in some circumstances even where the underlying charge does not result in conviction — a structural problem in Michigan’s legislative framework that this case is now going to resolve in front of a judge.
The conduct at issue does not involve disruption. It does not involve unauthorized access in any technically coherent sense of the term. Using a shared computer while another user’s authenticated session is open and triggering an outbox send is not breaking into a system. It is not interfering with a communications network. It is what happens when someone fails to log out of a shared machine. The statutes were not written to reach that fact pattern, and the prosecution’s theory requires stretching both of them past their operative meaning. Judge Hamood will now have to determine whether they stretch that far.
A motion to quash the bindover is not a procedural technicality. It is a direct argument that even accepting the prosecution’s facts as entirely true, the case does not meet the legal threshold required to proceed. That motion was litigated and did not succeed in stopping the case. But its existence — alongside multiple preliminary examination transcripts, a judicial reassignment, and now a bench trial election — signals that this is a dispute about statutory fit, not a factual contest about what Kerry did or did not do. No one is seriously arguing that the outbox did not send. The argument is whether that constitutes a crime under these statutes. It does not.
What Scio Township and Washtenaw County Are Spending on This
For reference: $103,000 funds roughly 200 hours of victim advocacy work, baseline cybersecurity training across an entire municipal operation, or dozens of sexual assault case processing hours. Washtenaw County chose this instead. That is a resource allocation decision, and the public officials making it should account for it.
Every dollar spent prosecuting a case built on Will Hathaway’s failure to log out of his email is a dollar not spent on something that actually merits the weight of the criminal justice system. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office has a full docket. The Sheriff’s Department has a full caseload. Clutch Justice has pending public records inquiries with both offices for updated cost figures covering the period since December 2024 and will publish the responses when received.
Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, whose office is responsible for this prosecution, is a candidate in Michigan’s Attorney General race — a race centered, in part, on accountability and transparency. The decision to push a case this weak to trial, against this backdrop, is not a neutral prosecutorial judgment. It is a choice that deserves scrutiny on its own merits, separate from the politics, and that scrutiny has not materialized from the institutions positioned to provide it.
Why This Case Has Received Sustained Attention
Scio News has been the consistent record on this case. They were present for the pretrial motions. They documented the $103,000 expenditure. They named this a nothing burger before this publication did. Clutch Justice added the statutory analysis in April 2026 because the legal theory deserved examination on its own terms, separate from the local politics.
Together, the coverage record is unambiguous: this case was questionable at filing, has not been strengthened by litigation, and is now heading to a bench trial on a theory that stretches two statutes past what they were designed to reach. The police report that should have ended the matter at the investigative stage was apparently not sufficient to stop the charge. A judge will now have to do what the Washtenaw County Prosecutor declined to do: apply the law to the facts and reach the conclusion the record compels.
When that verdict comes in, whoever it favors, the record of how this case was built, who built it, and what it cost is going to be right here.
How Judge Hamood defines “interference” under MCL 750.540 — specifically whether the court requires documented disruption of a communications system or whether an outbox send from an authenticated open session clears that bar. Whether the prosecution attempts to argue that Kerry’s use of the shared machine constitutes unauthorized access, and how the court evaluates that argument given that no authentication was required or circumvented. The cost figures from the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which this publication has requested and will publish when received. And whether any examination of Hathaway’s original complaint — and the good faith basis for it — surfaces in the proceedings.
Sources
Williams, Rita, A Trial Date is Set for the Scio Township Nothing Burger, Clutch Justice (May 19, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/jillian-kerry-trial-update/.
APA 7Williams, R. (2026, May 19). A trial date is set for the Scio Township nothing burger. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/jillian-kerry-trial-update/
MLA 9Williams, Rita. “A Trial Date for the Scio Township Nothing Burger.” Clutch Justice, 19 May 2026, clutchjustice.com/jillian-kerry-trial-update/.
ChicagoWilliams, Rita. “A Trial Date is Set for the Scio Township Nothing Burger.” Clutch Justice, May 19, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/jillian-kerry-trial-update/.
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