A gun rights restoration hearing, a vacant prosecutor’s chair, and the second formal accountability question raised against an Alger County prosecutor running for judge.
An Attorney Grievance Commission complaint filed against Alger County Prosecutor Robert Steinhoff alleges he stepped away from his prosecutorial role to personally represent his uncle at a November 2024 gun rights restoration hearing, and elicited testimony the complaint says he knew to be false. The complaint surfaces roughly six months after Clutch Justice first reported on Steinhoff’s effort to sideline the sitting judge in the same judicial race he is now campaigning to join.
A Family Hearing With No One at the Prosecutor’s Table
Robert Murdock lost his gun rights in 1986 after pleading guilty to felony breaking and entering and larceny, for which he served one year in jail. Under Michigan law, a person in his position can petition to restore those rights five years after finishing their sentence. In November 2024, that petition was filed on Murdock’s behalf by Roxanne Steinhoff, an attorney who also happens to be Alger County’s only assistant prosecutor, and who is married to Alger County Prosecutor Robert Steinhoff. Murdock is Robert Steinhoff’s uncle.
The hearing was scheduled five days later before 11th Circuit Court Judge Brian Rahilly. According to a transcript of the proceeding, Roxanne Steinhoff was unable to attend. Robert Steinhoff told the court he had coordinated the scheduling himself and had not checked his wife’s calendar before setting the date. Rahilly’s response, on the record, was characteristically dry.
I am unshocked.
Judge Brian Rahilly, responding to Prosecutor Steinhoff’s account of the scheduling conflict, per hearing transcript
Rahilly then asked whether Murdock consented to having the prosecutor himself fill in for his wife. Court security camera video reviewed by My UP News shows Steinhoff rising from the prosecutor’s table and walking across the courtroom to sit beside his uncle. The complaint’s characterization of that moment is blunt: with Steinhoff at the defense side of the room, no one remained at the table to represent the People of the State of Michigan. Rahilly swore Murdock in, and Steinhoff began questioning his own client.
The Testimony the Complaint Calls False
Under Steinhoff’s questioning, Murdock confirmed he had completed his sentence and probation and paid his fines. Steinhoff then asked whether the 1986 offense reflected the impulsiveness of youth, and Murdock agreed. Steinhoff asked if his law breaking days were behind him. Murdock said they were, and said so emphatically. Steinhoff closed by telling the court that the 1986 offenses were the only crimes on record and that nothing had happened since. Satisfied that the statutory criteria were met, Rahilly restored Murdock’s gun rights.
The Mathieu complaint alleges that both representations, that Murdock’s law breaking was behind him and that no further offenses had occurred, were false, and that Steinhoff knew it when he elicited them. As evidentiary support, the complaint attaches two photographs: one showing Murdock with two other men holding rifles fitted with extended magazines in a wooded setting, and a second showing three rifles racked in what the complaint identifies as Murdock’s bedroom. The complaint further alleges that Steinhoff had personal knowledge of his uncle’s continued firearm possession because he hunted alongside Murdock for years at a family deer blind, using Murdock’s own guns. It also alleges Steinhoff told court staff that an eight-point buck mounted in his office had been given to him by Murdock as compensation for legal work, a claim that, if accurate, would place a firearms-adjacent gift from a prohibited person inside the prosecutor’s own office years before the restoration hearing.
None of this has been adjudicated. The Attorney Grievance Commission has not made a finding, and the underlying factual dispute, whether Murdock in fact possessed firearms during the prohibition period and whether Steinhoff knew it, remains exactly that: an allegation supported by photographs and an affidavit, not a determination of fact.
An Affidavit From the Family
The complaint’s primary source for Steinhoff’s alleged personal knowledge is a signed affidavit from Colin Murdock, Robert Murdock’s son. According to the complaint, the affidavit states that his father possessed firearms for as long as Colin can remember despite the legal prohibition, that his father’s felony status was widely known within the family, including to Robert Steinhoff, and that Colin personally witnessed Steinhoff in his father’s presence carrying and using firearms on multiple occasions before the 2024 hearing restored those rights formally. If credited, that account would place Steinhoff in the position of eliciting sworn testimony that directly contradicted what a close family member says he personally observed and told investigators.
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Explore the courses ?The Rule at Issue, and Why Prosecutors Rarely Face It
The complaint alleges violations of three separate Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct tied to Steinhoff’s alleged knowledge of his uncle’s continued firearm possession. It also cites Knight v. People of the State of Michigan, a case establishing that a prosecutor’s role in a gun rights restoration hearing is not ceremonial. The state has an interest in that proceeding distinct from the petitioner’s, which is precisely why an empty prosecutor’s table is not a procedural footnote.
Alger County’s prosecutor’s office had exactly two attorneys authorized to represent the People in this matter: Robert Steinhoff and his wife, Roxanne Steinhoff, the county’s sole assistant prosecutor. When Roxanne could not attend, there was no independent backup, no conflict screen, and no mechanism to ensure an adversarial party sat opposite Murdock. The complaint frames this plainly, alleging that by leaving the prosecutor’s table vacant, the Steinhoffs set aside their duty to the public out of loyalty to their uncle. Whether or not the false testimony allegation is ultimately sustained, the structural gap, a two-person office in which both attorneys share a direct family relationship with the petitioner, existed regardless of anyone’s intent.
When My UP News asked Judge Rahilly about the complaint, he declined to discuss the specific case but noted generally that an attorney bears responsibility for recognizing a conflict, and a prosecutor bears responsibility for knowing the duties of the office.
Timing and the Judicial Campaign
Steinhoff is currently campaigning for the 11th Circuit Court seat Rahilly holds. Clutch Justice reported in February 2026 on Steinhoff’s separate effort to obtain extraordinary relief against Rahilly, arguing the judge’s private communications raised impartiality concerns, an effort that resulted in Rahilly’s reassignment from certain cases and drew public pushback from defense attorneys, including Mathieu, who at the time accused Steinhoff of using the maneuver to advance his own judicial candidacy.
Steinhoff declined an interview request from My UP News but provided a written statement characterizing the new complaint as political maneuvering by a former public defender with an ax to grind, and noting Mathieu’s alignment with the sitting judge he is running against. Mathieu also declined an interview, saying the complaint speaks for itself, and responded to Steinhoff’s statement by observing the tension between his campaign platform and his own conduct.
Robert Murdock pleads guilty to felony breaking and entering and larceny and serves one year in jail, triggering a lifetime firearm prohibition absent formal restoration.
Baseline fact, not in dispute.
Roxanne Steinhoff files a petition to restore Murdock’s gun rights. Five days later, with Roxanne unable to attend, Robert Steinhoff appears in her place, questions Murdock directly, and the petition is granted.
Documented by hearing transcript and court security video.
Steinhoff seeks extraordinary relief against Judge Rahilly over private text messages, resulting in Rahilly’s reassignment from certain cases. Clutch Justice reports on the episode in February 2026.
Separate matter, same two individuals, same judicial race.
Jana Mathieu files a complaint with the Attorney Grievance Commission alleging Steinhoff’s conduct at the 2024 hearing violated Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct.
Complaint is an allegation; no finding has been made.
A Grievance Administrator evaluates the complaint. If it proceeds, Steinhoff is asked to respond and the AGC investigates, a process that typically takes about six months.
Investigation timeline places likely resolution after the general election.
Steinhoff stands for the 11th Circuit Court seat against the sitting judge who presided over the hearing at the center of the complaint. If Steinhoff wins while the AGC matter is unresolved, any surviving accountability question shifts to the Judicial Tenure Commission, which moves more slowly than the AGC.
Structural note: the review body changes based on the outcome of the race it concerns.
How Often Does This Actually Happen to a Prosecutor
Formal discipline against a prosecutor is statistically rare in Michigan, and the numbers explain why a case reaching the Attorney Discipline Board draws attention regardless of outcome.
The Attorney Discipline Board maintains a public database of past cases, and prosecutors appear in it rarely. One instructive comparison is Karen Plants, a former Wayne County assistant prosecutor disbarred after the ADB found she allowed false statements into the record to protect a paid informant’s identity during a drug conspiracy prosecution. The board’s opinion in that matter described a lawyer’s knowing submission of false testimony as among the most serious ethical violations an attorney can commit, and cited a 1980 Florida case in which a prosecutor who let an informant testify under a false name was likewise disbarred. The facts of Plants and the allegations against Steinhoff differ substantially, and nothing here suggests an equivalent outcome is likely or warranted. What the comparison shows is simply how seriously the ADB has historically treated the specific act of knowingly eliciting or allowing false courtroom testimony, when that allegation has been proven.
Why This Case Matters
Gun rights restoration hearings are quiet proceedings. They rarely draw press, rarely draw appeals, and rarely produce a paper trail beyond the transcript itself. That is precisely what makes the structural question here worth asking regardless of how the AGC ultimately rules: what happens when the only two people authorized to represent the public interest in a small county’s prosecutor’s office are married to each other, and one of them is related to the person seeking relief.
The Attorney Grievance Commission complaint discussed in this article is an allegation. It has not been adjudicated, no finding of misconduct has been made against Robert Steinhoff, and the underlying factual disputes remain open. Clutch Justice will update this reporting as the AGC process moves forward.
Small counties concentrate power by necessity. Alger County does not have the staffing to build in the redundancy that larger jurisdictions take for granted. That is a resourcing problem as much as an ethics problem, and it is one Michigan’s judicial and prosecutorial accountability systems were not built to address. A complaint against one prosecutor in one county will not fix that. What it can do is put the structural gap on the record, which is where accountability work has to start.
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