Seven Years for a Torn Receipt: The JTC Finally Decides FC-106 and FC-105

On July 28, 2026, the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission issued decisions in two formal complaints arising from a single bicycle rental dispute on Mackinac Island. The dispute took place on August 20, 2019. The record it produced ran 2,534 days.

Two Michigan district court judges rented bicycles on Mackinac Island on the afternoon of August 20, 2019. One bike did not shift properly. A request for a discount became an argument. An argument became a torn receipt. A torn receipt became an accusation of assault, three responding officers, a grievance, two formal complaints, fourteen days of public hearing, two Master’s reports, objections, oral argument, and finally, on July 28, 2026, two decisions from the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission.

The Commission cleared one judge and recommended that the other be suspended for nine months without pay.

I want to be direct about what makes this pair of decisions worth reading closely, because it is not the bike shop. Both decisions are unusually candid about how the Commission’s own investigative sequence shaped the evidence it later prosecuted. Read together, FC-106 and FC-105 constitute a self-portrait of a judicial discipline system that takes seven years to answer a question that four minutes of video largely answered in 2019.

What the Commission Decided on July 28

One procedural detail is worth noting before the substance. Commission Chairperson Thomas J. Ryan and Commissioner Hon. Pablo Cortes both recused from FC-106. Only Cortes recused from FC-105. Seven commissioners signed the Nance decision. Eight signed the Brue decision. The two matters arose from the same afternoon, involved the same witnesses, the same videos, and the same Master, and were argued on the same day, but they were decided by two differently constituted panels.

How a Bike Rental Became a Seven-Year Disciplinary Record

The underlying facts are not seriously disputed in either decision, largely because a private business had fifteen security cameras.

Judge Nance and Judge Brue traveled together to the Michigan District Judges Association annual conference on Mackinac Island. Judge Nance had no credit card with her, so Judge Brue’s card secured both rentals. About an hour later they returned. Judge Nance reported a shifting problem and asked for an accommodation. Two shop employees test rode the bike and found nothing wrong. One employee used the phrase “free ride,” which Judge Brue understood as racially charged and which the employee testified he did not intend that way.

The owner, Ira Green, came to the register and could not locate the rental in the shop computer because of how the name on the card was formatted. He asked Judge Brue whether she had used a card in another name. She was offended. He asked for her ticket. She gave it to him. He located the record.

Green then held that ticket for more than seven minutes while the conversation deteriorated. Judge Brue reached across the counter for it. Green pulled his hand back and turned away. The ticket tore. Green threw his half in the trash and printed an identical replacement within about a minute. Judge Brue immediately accused him of assault and said she wanted to press charges.

Three officers responded: Corporal Kenneth Hardy and Officer Joshua Smyth of the Mackinac Island Police Department, and Michigan State Police Trooper Daniel Bergsma. Hardy and Smyth watched roughly one minute of shop video with Green in the back of the store. Hardy came out and told Judge Brue that if anyone had committed an assault, it was her. Trooper Bergsma brokered a resolution: Green would zero out both rentals, the judges would not return to the shop, and no one would pursue charges. Green and Judge Brue shook hands.

Seven days later, Green mailed a grievance to the Judicial Tenure Commission. It named only Judge Brue. It described Judge Nance only as a friend or associate, and made no complaint about her conduct at all.

FC-106: Why the Nance Complaint Was Dismissed

Judge Nance was never accused of misconduct at the bike shop. She was charged with lying about it afterward.

In July 2020, disciplinary counsel called her chambers. She was told the Commission wanted to ask her questions about Green’s complaint and that she was not the subject of an investigation. She offered to answer on the phone right then. Disciplinary counsel said the answers needed to be under oath.

Her examination was set for July 28, 2020. Her attorney asked in writing, more than once, for the videos in advance. Disciplinary counsel offered to make them available the morning of the examination. Her attorney called that unacceptable. Judge Nance overruled her own lawyer and agreed to proceed on those terms.

On the morning of the examination she was given three videos. One of the three was irrelevant, recorded hours before the judges ever arrived. A second was a short clip of the first. What she actually had was one minute and nine seconds of a counter dispute. She was also shown Green’s grievance letter and two police reports for the first time that morning. She had roughly one to one and a half hours with all of it. The examination that followed lasted more than two hours and ranged well beyond anything the clip depicted.

In August 2020, Green sent disciplinary counsel eleven videos, including a twenty-seven minute recording from the camera over the register and a nine and a half minute recording of the sidewalk meeting with all three officers. Judge Nance did not have those when she testified.

The Commission said this plainly. All of the allegedly false statements in Count One rested on answers about matters outside the brief clip she had been shown. When she later reviewed the full videos, she corrected herself in her September 2021 written response, acknowledging that her account of Corporal Hardy ignoring the two judges was wrong. The longer video showed Hardy listening for more than nine minutes.

The legal standard did the rest. Under In re Simpson, 500 Mich 533 (2017), a misrepresentation is sanctionable only if intentional, meaning the judge knew the statement was false. Under In re Green, 512 Mich 533 (2023), and In re Gorcyca, 500 Mich 588 (2017), there must additionally be proof of intent to deceive or a wrongful motive.

Selective memory does not equal falsehood; incorrect memory does not equal falsehood; imprecision in expression does not equal falsehood; even an answer that one chooses to disbelieve does not equal a falsehood.

In re Gorcyca, 500 Mich 588, 637 (2017), quoted in the Commission’s FC-106 decision

The Commission found that Judge Nance had been, in the Master’s words, trying to remember a minor scuffle months after she believed it had been resolved. It found her recollection about Corporal Hardy inaccurate but not knowingly false. On the disputed instruction to “wait by the curb,” it found disciplinary counsel had not carried its burden at all, in part because Hardy himself conceded he could not remember where he told the judges to stand. Count Two, which repeated the curb allegation in written form, failed for the same reason. The complaint was dismissed.

FC-105: Where the Commission Broke From the Master

The Brue decision is the longer and more consequential document, because in it the Commission largely reversed its own Master on a record he heard live and it did not.

Judge Lipsey had found no misconduct. He found that Judge Brue could reasonably have believed the receipt was snatched from her, and therefore did not intentionally lie about it. He also concluded that failing to prove an accusation is not itself actionable misconduct.

The Commission, reviewing de novo under In re Chrzanowski, 465 Mich 468 (2001), rejected both findings.

This finding is completely at odds with the video evidence and cannot be accepted.

Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, Decision and Recommendation, FC No. 105, July 28, 2026

On Count One, the Commission found that Judge Brue falsely told Green that he had assaulted her and repeated that false report to Corporal Hardy and Trooper Bergsma, telling both that she wanted to press charges. On intent, the Commission relied on her professional background: more than three decades as a lawyer, more than two decades as a Wayne County prosecutor, and a district court docket since 2012 that includes criminal and civil assault matters. Applying the elements of assault under People v Starks, 473 Mich 227 (2005), the Commission concluded that a person with that background could not subjectively believe that a shopkeeper reflexively turning away from a grabbed receipt had committed an assault.

On Count Two, the Commission split. It accepted that a fourteen-month gap and limited video access could explain several of the alleged misstatements in her November 2020 written response, and it declined to find misconduct on those. It found two charges proved. First, that she denied identifying herself as a judge to Green and to Corporal Hardy, when the video, the officer’s contemporaneous notes, and the lip-reading transcripts established that she did. Second, that she claimed no memory of reporting an assault to the officers and suggested Green was the one who raised it, which the Commission found she knew to be false.

Count Three, alleging failure to cooperate under MCR 9.202(B)(1)(f) because her counsel objected to five questions about the parallel Nance investigation, failed. The Commission found that objecting to five questions among many, in a matter where she had answered well over a hundred written inquiries, is not a failure to cooperate. It noted that disciplinary counsel never responded to counsel’s offer to answer if given a legitimate basis for the questions, and instead charged it.

The Evidence Sequencing Problem Both Decisions Describe

Strip away the bicycle and the same fact pattern appears in both files.

Judge Nance answered questions under oath in July 2020 holding a one minute nine second clip. Judge Brue answered sixty-two written inquiries in November 2020 holding the same three videos, one of which was irrelevant. Her counsel wrote at the time that access to the full recording would have helped her refresh her memory. Disciplinary counsel did not show her the remaining videos until June 2021 and did not give her copies until July 2021.

Both judges were then charged with misremembering.

The Commission credited that sequence as a partial defense in both cases. It dismissed FC-106 substantially on that ground. It threw out several Count Two charges in FC-105 on that ground. Which is the correct legal result, and also the clearest possible statement that the investigative method generated the evidentiary problem the process then spent six years adjudicating.

The Lip-Reading Ruling and the Limits of the Master System

One of the more significant rulings in FC-105 is evidentiary, and it says something uncomfortable about the fact-finding structure.

The register camera produced high quality video with no sound. Disciplinary counsel retained three lip-readers. Dr. Regan Thibodeau, deaf since birth, worked alone. Dr. Rosemary Wanis and Carla Shird, both deaf since early childhood, worked in tandem, reviewed the video separately, then compared findings and included only words on which they agreed.

The Master excluded all three under MRE 702, on the ground that he had not seen lip-reading recognized as a courtroom expertise. He did not first take their testimony.

The Commission held that this misapplied the rule. MRE 702 qualifies experts by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, and Michigan reads that clause broadly. Under Mulholland v DEC Int’l Corp, 432 Mich 395 (1989), licensure is not a prerequisite. Under People v Whitfield, 425 Mich 116 (1986), the relevant fields are not limited to the scientific or technical. Three witnesses who have read lips as a survival skill for forty-five years possess specialized knowledge, and the absence of an American certification body does not change that.

On reliability, the Commission credited method: Dr. Thibodeau spent nine hours with the video and recorded only words she was ninety-five percent confident of; Shird spent twelve hours and zoomed in on the speaker’s face; the Wanis and Shird transcript was limited to agreed words with an estimated accuracy of eighty to ninety percent. The video independently corroborated the transcripts at two points.

Note the asymmetry the record produced. Judge Nance did not object to the same three witnesses, so their testimony came in at her hearing. Judge Brue objected, and it was excluded at hers. Two hearings on one incident, one Master, and the identical evidence was admitted in one and excluded in the other, until the Commission fixed it on review nine months later.

The Attestation Gap in MCR 9.221(B)

The sanction in FC-105 turned on a question no Michigan court has ever answered.

Michigan precedent is severe about judges who lie under oath to the Commission. In re Simpson, In re McCree, 495 Mich 51 (2014), In re Adams, 494 Mich 162 (2013), and In re Justin, 490 Mich 394 (2012) all point the same direction, and the Commission acknowledged it would be constrained to recommend removal if Judge Brue’s false statements had been made under oath.

They were not. MCR 9.221(B) requires a respondent to sign a response to a request for comments and provides that the signature serves as the respondent’s attestation as to the veracity of the response. The rule does not use the word oath. It does not incorporate the formalities of MCL 600.1432. Reading In re Simpson alongside the verification provisions now at MCR 1.109(D)(3)(a), the Commission concluded that an attestation of veracity is not an oath, and that the removal line of cases therefore does not apply. It called the question one of first impression.

What Happens Next in Each Case

For Judge Nance, nothing. A dismissal generates no recommendation, and the Supreme Court reviews Commission recommendations. There is nothing to send up. Seven years of investigation, six days of public hearing, and a two-count formal complaint conclude with a dismissal and a press release.

For Judge Brue, the Commission’s Decision and Recommendation was filed with the Michigan Supreme Court on July 28, 2026 under Supreme Court No. 165049, and the matter proceeds under MCR 9.250 and following. The Court reviews the record and may adopt, reject, or modify the recommendation. Until it acts, the nine-month suspension is a proposal. In In re Simpson, the Commission recommended removal and the Court imposed a nine-month suspension instead, which is a useful reminder that Commission recommendations are not outcomes.

Which means the clock is still running. A grievance filed in August 2019 has not yet produced a final disciplinary result in July 2026.

Why Seven Years Is a Design Failure, Not a Scheduling Problem

Let me be precise about the claim I am making, because “the system is slow” is a complaint, not an analysis.

The Michigan Court Rules governing the Judicial Tenure Commission impose deadlines on respondents. MCR 9.222 gives a judge twenty-eight days to answer. MCR 9.221 requires a signed response within a stated period. The rules impose no corresponding outer limit on the Commission’s investigation, on the time between investigation and formal complaint, on the time between complaint and public hearing, or on the time between a Master’s report and a decision. The asymmetry is the design.

Look at where the time actually went. More than three years from grievance to formal complaint. Roughly two and a half years from complaint to hearing. Nine months and change from the Master’s reports to the decisions. The largest block of delay occurred in the phase with the fewest procedural constraints and the least public visibility.

The consequences compound. Judge Brue answered written questions fourteen months after the incident, holding a one-minute clip. Judge Nance testified under oath eleven months after, holding the same clip. Witnesses testified at public hearings nearly six years after. Corporal Hardy could not recall where he told two judges to stand, which is entirely reasonable and which also defeated a charge. Memory decay is not a neutral background condition in a misrepresentation case. It is the whole battlefield, and the process governs how much of it there is.

If They Were Defendants, This Case Would Already Be Over

Michigan has decided, repeatedly and in writing, that cases like this cannot take this long. It simply did not apply any of those decisions here.

Start with the limitations period. Under MCL 767.24, most Michigan felonies and misdemeanors must be charged within six years of the offense. The Commission found in its sanction analysis that Judge Brue’s false report to Corporal Hardy and Trooper Bergsma would constitute a misdemeanor under MCL 750.411a, and it noted she was never charged. She could not be. The six-year clock on conduct from August 20, 2019 expired on August 20, 2025. That was eight weeks before the Master issued his reports, and eleven months before the Commission decided the conduct was misconduct.

Then the speedy trial guarantee, which appears in the Sixth Amendment, in Const 1963, art 1, section 20, in MCL 768.1, and in MCR 6.004(A). Michigan courts presume prejudice when more than eighteen months pass between arrest and trial, at which point the burden shifts to the prosecution to show no injury. People v Williams, 475 Mich 245, 261 to 262 (2006), citing People v Collins, 388 Mich 680, 695 (1972).

Apply that yardstick to this record. The interval between Ira Green’s grievance and the first formal complaint was more than double the presumptive prejudice threshold all by itself, before any charge existed. The interval between the formal complaint and the public hearing exceeded it again. The full span from grievance to decision runs more than four and a half times the point at which a Michigan court would presume a defendant had been harmed.

For a defendant in custody the number is smaller still. MCL 780.131 requires that an incarcerated defendant be brought to trial within 180 days of proper notice. Six months. The Commission took roughly thirty-nine months just to file the charge.

The asymmetry of consequence matters as much as the asymmetry of timing. A defendant awaiting trial may sit in jail, may lose a job, may live under bond conditions restricting travel and contact, and has a remedy with teeth if the state drags. Both judges here continued to hold office, hear cases, and draw a state salary through all 2,534 days. The delay cost them reputation and legal fees. It did not cost either of them liberty or income.

Be precise about who stands on the other side of that. Judge Brue and Judge Nance presided in district courts that arraign people, set bond, and try cases subject to every clock described above. Those courts enforce the clock daily. Nothing enforced any clock on the body reviewing the judges.

What This Cost

The Commission does not publish per-case accounting, so no exact figure for FC-105 and FC-106 exists in public. What does exist is enough to build a defensible range from published budget figures, published salary schedules, and the documented volume of work in the record itself. Everything below is an estimate, and every assumption is stated.

Start with the agency baseline. In 2024 the Commission operated on a budget of $2,860,338 with actual expenditures of $2,711,799. In that same year it received 530 requests for investigation involving 331 judges and resolved 622 grievances, of which 586 were closed without action after initial review. Almost all of the Commission’s money is therefore consumed by a small number of contested matters. These two were among the most heavily contested in the agency’s recent history.

The Dismissal Share

Judge Nance’s public hearing consumed six of the fourteen hearing days. Her written phase involved 37 questions against Judge Brue’s hundred and more. Her decision runs seventeen pages against sixty-two. On a conservative allocation, somewhere between thirty and forty percent of the total belongs to FC-106.

That is roughly $90,000 to $320,000 in public money, spent across nearly seven years, to reach a dismissal. In a case against a judge who was never accused of any misconduct at the bike shop. Who was told she was a witness and not a subject. Who was examined under oath while holding one minute and nine seconds of an eleven-video record. And who voluntarily corrected her own testimony in September 2021, on her own initiative, the moment she finally saw the rest of the video. She was charged fifteen months after correcting herself.

There is a second figure worth stating carefully, because it is easy to misuse. A Michigan district court judge’s salary for FY 2024-25 was $180,741, paid entirely from the state general fund, with district funding units permitted under MCL 600.8202 to add a local supplement on top. Across the period these files were pending, the state paid something on the order of $1.2 million per judge in base salary alone.

The Case for the Current Process

The defense of this system is not frivolous, and it deserves to be stated properly.

Judicial discipline is not ordinary employment discipline. Removing or suspending an elected judge overturns a voter decision, and the procedural weight of that justifies a slow, adversarial, heavily documented process. The Master system exists so that a neutral judicial officer, not the agency that investigated, hears live testimony. The intent requirement in In re Simpson and In re Gorcyca exists precisely so that a judge with an ordinary human memory is not removed from office for getting details wrong years later. Both of those protections worked here. Judge Nance was cleared. Several charges against Judge Brue were rejected on memory grounds. The pandemic consumed a meaningful part of 2020 through 2022, and the Commission is a small agency handling every grievance filed against every judicial officer in Michigan.

And the outcomes look defensible. A judge who the Commission found falsely reported a crime to police faces a serious recommended sanction. A judge who forgot details of someone else’s argument does not.

Here is where that argument fails. Due process explains adversarial procedure. It does not explain the three years and two months before any adversarial procedure began. It does not explain examining a witness under oath while holding evidence you decline to show her. It does not explain reaching a decision nine months after receiving a report on a record that was already six years old. Correct outcomes reached seven years late, after fourteen hearing days, three lip-reading experts, and a reversed Master, are not proof that the process worked. They are proof that it eventually stopped.

What Structural Reform Would Require

Four changes, each grounded in something these two records actually show.

A fifth, longer-term item belongs on the list even though these files do not resolve it. The National Center for State Courts audit under Administrative Order 2023-2 has completed two of three phases. Phase III is meant to examine how grievances are filed, processed, and resolved. Until it finishes, the Commission is investigating disparities in the same process it uses to adjudicate claims about those disparities, which is a structural conflict no individual decision can cure.

Who Absorbs the Delay

The people who carry the cost of a seven-year discipline process are rarely the ones the process is about.

Ira Green filed a grievance seven days after a dispute in his shop. He was told by his own police chief that without the video, he could have been arrested on a judge’s accusation. He testified at a public hearing almost six years later. He learned the outcome nearly seven years after he wrote the letter.

Judge Nance spent nearly four years as a respondent on charges built from an examination she was told was a witness interview. She was cleared. Nothing gives that time back.

Judge Brue has been the subject of a public complaint since November 2022 and now faces a recommended nine-month unpaid suspension that the Supreme Court has not yet acted on. Whatever the Court decides, she has already served seven years of proceedings.

And every litigant who appeared before either judge during that period appeared before a judge whose disciplinary status was unresolved, in a system that offers the public no docket to check, no timeline to consult, and no way to learn that a matter is pending until the Commission decides to say so.

The Commission got the law right in both files. That is worth saying clearly, because it is true, and because the reasoning in these decisions is better than the process that produced them. Judge Nance should not have been charged for failing to recall someone else’s argument, and the Commission said so. Judge Brue’s false report of a crime to two police officers is serious misconduct, and the Commission said that too, correcting a Master who had waved it off.

None of that required 2,534 days. The video was recorded in 2019. Everything after that was procedure.