Three Michigan judges. Three negotiated exits. Zero public discipline on the record that matters most.
This article includes reporting on a third case, Judge Daniel A. O’Brien, based on a source who filed a formal Request for Investigation with the Judicial Tenure Commission in May 2025 and who provided Clutch Justice with a written account of the Commission’s closure letter. The source’s identity is protected. Clutch Justice is reporting this ahead of independent public confirmation; the source’s characterization of the closure letter, including the stated reason for closure, has not yet been independently verified against the letter itself, and is presented below with that attribution.
A minor or protected individual (a probate ward) is referenced in the underlying complaint. Clutch Justice is withholding that person’s name and any identifying detail, at the source’s request and as a matter of standing editorial policy for guardianship matters.
Michigan’s judicial discipline system lets judges retire their way out of the consequences of documented misconduct. Oakland County Probate Judge Kathleen Ryan was recorded making racist and homophobic remarks and never faced a formal public complaint before retiring with her pension intact. Ottawa County’s Bradley Knoll got a negotiated retirement instead of removal after a domestic assault conviction, then was accused of assaulting a litigant in his own courtroom before that retirement even took effect. And according to a source who filed a formal complaint against Oakland County Probate Judge Daniel A. O’Brien in May 2025, the Judicial Tenure Commission has now closed that case too, citing O’Brien’s departure from the bench. The Commission’s own public records show this pattern is not new.
Judge Kathleen Ryan was recorded calling herself “a new racist” and making derogatory statements about Black Americans and LGBTQ+ people. The Judicial Tenure Commission investigated for roughly 15 months and never filed a formal public complaint. She retired voluntarily in January 2026.
A colleague, Oakland County Probate Judge Daniel O’Brien, publicly called Ryan’s departure “a sad day for the court” and said the investigation into her was “handled poorly.” He was not describing the recordings. He was describing the inconvenience of losing a judge.
Bradley Knoll, chief judge of the 58th District Court, pleaded guilty to domestic assault and got a consent order requiring retirement rather than removal. Before that retirement took effect, he was charged with a second, unrelated assault, this time against a man who appeared before him as a litigant.
The JTC’s own public disciplinary log shows multiple prior complaints dismissed specifically because the judge retired, including former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway in 2013. Retirement-as-exit is a documented pattern, not an isolated leniency.
Retirement generally leaves judicial pension eligibility untouched, because no removal or forfeiture proceeding is ever completed. The system’s most severe consequence and its most common escape route are the same door.
A source who filed a formal JTC complaint against Oakland County Probate Judge Daniel A. O’Brien in May 2025 says the Commission recently closed the matter, citing O’Brien’s retirement from the bench. Clutch Justice is reporting this ahead of public confirmation; the underlying closure letter has not yet been independently reviewed.
The Commission is not powerless once a judge leaves. Taylor District Court Judge Joseph Slaven resigned in November 2025 while his own public complaint was pending, and the case kept moving anyway, through a master’s hearing to a Michigan Supreme Court order. That is proof the retirement-closes-the-file outcome is a choice, not a requirement.
Did the JTC ever formally discipline Judge Ryan?
No. Her attorneys confirmed the Commission took no formal action. She retired before a public complaint was filed.
Was Judge O’Brien accused of misconduct?
O’Brien publicly defended Ryan’s record after her retirement. Separately, a source tells Clutch Justice they filed a JTC complaint against O’Brien himself in May 2025 over his own courtroom conduct, and that the Commission closed the matter citing his retirement. That second claim is source-reported and not yet independently confirmed.
Is Bradley Knoll still a judge?
He is suspended with pay under a Michigan Supreme Court consent order requiring his retirement, and he separately resigned. He is barred from handling domestic violence cases and from accepting a visiting judgeship before January 1, 2027.
Has retirement dismissed a JTC complaint before?
Yes. The Commission’s own alphabetical public record lists multiple formal complaints dismissed upon the judge’s retirement, including Diane Hathaway (2013), Dennis Powers (2014), and Frank Del Vero (2004).
Does a judge leaving office always end a JTC investigation?
No. The Commission’s own rules allow it to keep jurisdiction if the complaint was filed while the judge still held office. Taylor District Court Judge Joseph Slaven resigned in November 2025 with a public complaint still pending, and the case continued through a master’s hearing to a Michigan Supreme Court order.
The Judge Who Called Herself “a New Racist”
Kathleen Ryan spent more than 13 years on the Oakland County Probate bench, most recently as Chief Judge Pro Tem, before her own court administrator decided he had documentation instead of just complaints. Edward Hutton, an attorney who ran the non-judicial side of one of Michigan’s largest probate courts, recorded years of phone calls with Ryan after filing internal complaints that went nowhere. What he captured was not a single lapse. It was a pattern: Ryan describing herself as “a new racist,” calling Black Americans a “lazy piece of s***,” making homophobic remarks about elected officials, and at one point boasting that her position made her untouchable.
Chief Probate Judge Linda Hallmark removed Ryan from her docket on August 27, 2024, and referred the matter to the Judicial Tenure Commission. Ryan had no prior public JTC complaints. She had, however, been arrested for domestic assault in November 2021, a charge that was dropped after she told the responding officer she was a judge.
For fifteen months, the probate court ran on visiting judges while the investigation sat inside an agency that, by design, cannot confirm or deny an active inquiry. Then it simply ended. Ryan’s attorneys told reporters the Commission had decided not to take action and that retirement was her own choice. No hearing. No public findings. No formal complaint number for the public record to point to.
Nobody who has to answer for a judge’s conduct wants to be the one who calls it a sad day. Oakland County Probate Judge Daniel O’Brien called Ryan’s exit exactly that. He said she “was a great judge and was respected for her work on the bench,” and that he was “disappointed in how” the investigation had been “handled.” He was frustrated that the court had been short-staffed for a year. He was not, in that statement, frustrated that a sitting judge had spent years demeaning the people who worked for her.
That reaction from a colleague, not a defense of the recordings but a mourning of their consequences, is the part of this story that does not require a courtroom to evaluate. It is the culture the retirement loophole is built inside of.
A Second Complaint Against the Same Colleague
The record on Ryan is what put O’Brien’s public comments into this piece in the first place. What follows is a separate matter, reported to Clutch Justice directly by a source rather than pulled from an already-public disciplinary record, and it is presented with that distinction kept explicit throughout.
According to the source, they filed a formal Request for Investigation with the Judicial Tenure Commission against O’Brien in May 2025, arising from his handling of a probate guardianship matter. The source’s complaint describes O’Brien telling an interested party in the case, “I am sick of seeing you in my courtroom,” while that party had been actively trying to see the guardianship through on behalf of a ward whose identity Clutch Justice is withholding. The complaint further describes O’Brien telling an attorney in the courtroom, as the interested party was leaving, that he had given a previous litigant more time to speak because he “liked him” better. Both statements are the source’s account from the complaint filed with the Commission, not a recording, and are reported here as allegations under investigation rather than established fact.
According to the source, the Commission’s closure letter uses the same formula it has used before: the judge opted to retire, so the investigation is closed. That is boilerplate language, not case-specific reasoning, and Clutch Justice has seen it in at least one other closure letter from a prior investigation. The letter itself, per the source, does not cite O’Brien’s loss in a recent election. That detail is context the source provided separately, explaining why O’Brien chose to retire now rather than what the Commission’s letter says closed the file. The distinction matters: the Commission’s stated reason is retirement itself, full stop, regardless of what precipitated it.
As of publication, Oakland County’s own probate court website still lists O’Brien as the sitting Chief Probate Judge Pro Tempore, the role Ryan vacated when she retired. That is not necessarily a contradiction. County staff pages routinely lag behind personnel changes, and a closure letter citing a judge’s retirement is not the same as that retirement having already taken effect.
What is not in dispute is the pattern this would represent if the source’s account holds up. A complaint reaches the Commission. The Commission does not reach a public finding. The judge’s retirement, not any conclusion about the underlying conduct, becomes the stated reason the file closes. That is the same boilerplate mechanism, according to the source, that has closed other Commission files Clutch Justice has investigated before. It is also the same mechanism that closed the door on Kathleen Ryan’s recordings, on Diane Hathaway’s complaint in 2013, and on Dennis Powers’s complaint in 2014. If the O’Brien case follows the same shape, it will be the fourth documented time, not the first.
The Commission Has a Working Alternative. It Just Doesn’t Use It Here.
The retirement-closes-the-file pattern is not the only tool the Judicial Tenure Commission has. Its own rules say a departure from the bench does not automatically end an investigation: if a Request for Investigation was filed while the judge still held office, the Commission keeps jurisdiction even after the judge leaves. The case of Joseph D. Slaven, 23rd District Court in Taylor, shows what it looks like when the Commission actually uses that authority.
The Commission filed a public complaint against Slaven, Formal Complaint No. 108, on May 28, 2025, alleging he used his office to support another judicial candidate, publicly berated his chief judge, flipped off a courthouse camera on nine separate occasions, interfered with courtroom staff, sent disrespectful emails, declined to wear his robe on the bench, concealed his face during Zoom hearings, and lied to Commission investigators. Slaven resigned that November, while the complaint was still pending. The case did not close when he did. A special master held a hearing, filed a report, and the Commission issued its own Decision and Recommendation. The matter went to the Michigan Supreme Court, which has now issued an order in the case.
The point is not that Slaven’s case ended in some particular sanction. It is that it did not simply stop the moment he stopped being a judge. Disciplinary counsel kept presenting evidence. A master kept hearing it. The Commission kept making a recommendation. The public complaint against Slaven remains a public complaint, with an answer, a hearing record, and now a Supreme Court order attached to his name, regardless of the fact that he is no longer on the bench.
Nothing about the Commission’s own rules required Ryan’s fifteen months of investigation to end in silence, and nothing would have required O’Brien’s, if the source’s account is accurate. Slaven’s case is proof the mechanism to finish the job exists and gets used. It was not used here.
The Judicial Misconduct Database in The Lab lets you search formal and public complaints, dismissals, and outcomes across Michigan’s judiciary, the same public record this piece pulls from.
Search The Lab ?The Judge Who Got a Second Chance to Hit Someone
Bradley Knoll’s file runs differently but lands in the same place. Chief judge of the 58th District Court in Holland since being reappointed in 2022, and on the bench since 2002, Knoll was arrested in December 2023 after an argument with his wife escalated into a domestic assault. His 12-year-old grandson called 911. Knoll pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor in March 2024 and, under Michigan’s deferred judgment structure, completed probation without a formal conviction ever entering his record.
The Judicial Tenure Commission filed a formal complaint in April 2025, more than a year after the plea. The complaint did not stop at the assault. It alleged Knoll had also threatened the responding Grand Haven police officer, warning that an “ass would be in a sling for a false arrest” if he was not subsequently prosecuted. In July 2025, the Michigan Supreme Court assigned a master to hear the matter, and eventually found Knoll’s conduct violated multiple provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct, including the requirements to observe the law, avoid impropriety, and treat others with courtesy and respect.
The consequence was a consent order. Not removal. Retirement, effective July 1, 2026, with Knoll suspended with pay in the interim and barred from presiding over domestic violence cases before he left the bench.
The domestic assault
Knoll strikes his wife with an open hand during a domestic dispute at their Grand Haven home. His 12-year-old grandson calls 911. Knoll is arrested in a courthouse parking lot.
Guilty plea, no conviction entered
Knoll pleads guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault under MCL 769.4a. He completes roughly six months of probation. Under Michigan’s deferred judgment structure, the charge is dismissed without a formal conviction ever entering his record.
JTC files a formal complaint
The Judicial Tenure Commission files Complaint No. 107 against Knoll, alleging his guilty plea violated the Code of Judicial Conduct and that he treated police with disrespect during the arrest.
Master appointed, consent order for retirement
The Michigan Supreme Court appoints a master to hear the complaint and finds Knoll’s conduct violated multiple provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct. Rather than removal, the Court enters a consent order: mandatory retirement effective July 1, 2026, with suspension with pay in the interim.
A second alleged assault, from the bench
While still suspended with pay and awaiting his own negotiated retirement, Knoll allegedly assaults a man who appeared before him as a litigant, inside his own courtroom. Michigan State Police investigate. On May 29, 2026, Knoll pleads not guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge.
The second incident did not happen because the system missed something. It happened while the system’s own remedy, a negotiated exit rather than removal, was still working its way to a start date. A judge the Supreme Court had already found violated the Code of Judicial Conduct kept his robe, his salary, and his courtroom long enough to be accused of hitting someone in it.
This Is Not the First Time Retirement Has Ended an Investigation
The Judicial Tenure Commission maintains its own alphabetical public list of every judicial officer who has faced a formal or public complaint. Read closely, it documents the same mechanism repeating itself for decades. Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway’s Formal Complaint No. 91 was dismissed by the Commission in 2013 specifically because she retired. Dennis Powers, 52-1 District Court, saw Formal Complaint No. 94 dismissed on the same basis in 2014. Frank Del Vero, 53rd District Court, had Formal Complaint No. 75 dismissed upon retirement in 2004. Daniel Deja’s complaint was dismissed in 1998 for a related reason: he was not re-elected.
None of these entries describe what the underlying conduct was. That is the point. When retirement ends the process before a public complaint or hearing concludes, the substantive misconduct findings that would otherwise become part of the public record never do. The docket entry says “dismissed upon retirement.” It does not say what the judge did.
The Judicial Tenure Commission was created by a 1968 amendment to Article VI, Section 30 of the Michigan Constitution, with its procedures now codified at MCR 9.200 et seq. Its stated purpose is to promote the integrity of the judicial process without compromising judicial independence. The design choice that keeps producing this outcome is not written into the constitutional text. It is a practical consequence of how the Commission and the Supreme Court have chosen to resolve cases where a judge offers to leave before the process forces the issue: retirement is treated as a resolution equivalent to discipline, when in every documented sense it is the opposite of one.
The Golden Parachute, Scored
What Closing the Loophole Would Actually Require
I want to be direct about this because it is the part that gets skipped in favor of outrage. Naming the problem is easy. Michigan has spent decades demonstrating that retirement-in-lieu-of-discipline works exactly the way judges hope it will. Fixing it requires specific structural changes, not a general call for “more accountability.”
The Judicial Tenure Commission should be required to complete and publish its findings of fact once a public complaint has been authorized, regardless of whether the judge retires mid-process. A retirement announcement should not be a procedural off-ramp from a factual record.
When a completed disciplinary process would have supported removal, continued full pension eligibility should not be automatic. Right now, retirement generally preserves benefits precisely because no removal or forfeiture proceeding is ever finished.
Edward Hutton says he filed internal complaints about Ryan for years before anything moved. A court employee’s documented, repeated complaint about a sitting judge should trigger a mandatory referral window, not depend on the employee eventually going to the press.
Knoll remained suspended with pay and on the bench for months after the Supreme Court found he had violated the Code of Judicial Conduct, and was still in that position when the second incident occurred. A consent order for retirement should include an immediate removal from any courtroom access, not a delayed exit date.
A judge who calls herself a new racist gets to retire.
A judge who hits his wife gets a negotiated exit, then a second courtroom incident before that exit date arrives.
A third case, according to a source who filed the complaint himself, closes the same way: the judge leaves, and the file closes with him.
A fourth judge proves the file did not have to close. His case kept moving after he resigned, all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court.
A colleague calls the first one’s departure a sad day.
The Commission’s own records show this has happened before. Repeatedly.
None of that requires speculation. It is the documented record, and where it isn’t yet documented, this piece says so plainly.
Sources
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