A recantation the court tested and rejected. Newly discovered evidence about a detective’s credibility record. A reply brief that never arrived. And a docket entry that vanished for five weeks. Two Barry County cases are now asking the same institutional question at the same time.
One of the two proceedings discussed in this article involves a family member of this outlet’s founder. Clutch Justice is not identifying the defendant in that matter, and is not identifying a separate individual whose account is referenced later in this piece. Every factual claim below is sourced to a specific court order, docket entry, filed correspondence, or prior Clutch Justice reporting identified in the Sources section.
Claims involving what Barry County officials knew, and when, are characterized as documented and disputed facts before the court, not adjudicated findings, unless a specific court order or admission is cited. This article does not argue that the two proceedings discussed here are coordinated, or that activity in one caused activity in the other.
On August 7, 2026, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh granted Dean Terry Myers permission to add an issue to his pending appeal and file supplemental briefing, after Barry County Circuit Judge Michael Schipper denied Myers a new trial following the Court’s earlier remand. Myers’s supplemental brief is due September 4. That same week, a second and factually unrelated Barry County post-conviction case was working through its own evidentiary problem. Newly discovered evidence concerning the documented credibility record of Michigan State Police Sgt. Bryan Fuller, evidence the defendant contends Barry County officials already had, now supports a pending motion for relief from judgment and motions to disqualify Judge Schipper and the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office. Separately, correspondence establishing that an assistant prosecutor did not verify service of a reply brief on a self-represented, incarcerated litigant has been placed on that case’s record and is now the subject of an open Attorney Grievance Commission complaint. The exhibit referencing that correspondence entered the case’s public docket on July 1, could not be located under an accurate description by July 8, and did not reappear until August 7, after outside inquiry. Two Barry County cases, built on entirely different facts, are now testing the same institutional question at the same time: what happens when evidence surfaces that the system did not have, or did not use, the first time.
Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh granted Myers permission on August 7 to add an issue and file supplemental briefing, after Judge Schipper denied a new trial in June following the Supreme Court’s remand on the alleged victim’s later recantation.
A separate, unrelated Barry County post-conviction proceeding is built on newly discovered evidence concerning MSP Sgt. Bryan Fuller’s documented credibility record, evidence the defendant contends Barry County already had. Clutch Justice is not identifying the defendant.
Correspondence placed on the record documents that an assistant prosecutor’s answer, and a related reply period, were never verified as received by a self-represented, incarcerated litigant. An Attorney Grievance Commission complaint on that conduct remains open.
An evidentiary exhibit entered the second case’s register of actions on July 1, could not be located under an accurate description by July 8, and did not reappear until August 7, after outside inquiry.
Two independently developing Barry County records, built on unrelated facts, are converging in the same weeks. Clutch Justice does not claim coordination or causation between them.
What did the Michigan Supreme Court do on August 7?
Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh granted Dean Terry Myers permission to add an issue to the grounds presented on appeal and to file supplemental briefing. The supplemental brief is due September 4, and the prosecution has 28 days after service to respond.
Does this mean the Court found misconduct in Barry County?
No. The Court has not ruled Myers is entitled to a new trial and has not endorsed the substance of the added issue. It has permitted him to expand his appellate argument after the remand proceedings concluded. That is procedurally significant. It is not a finding.
Who is the defendant in the second case?
Clutch Justice is not identifying the defendant in that proceeding. The relevant facts are the documented conduct of Barry County’s court and prosecutor’s office, not the defendant’s identity.
What happened with the docket entry that disappeared?
An evidentiary filing entered the second case’s public register on July 1. By July 8 it could not be located under an accurate description, and a related entry instead appeared under the label “EXTRADITION HEARING.” The filing did not reappear intelligibly until August 7, after outside inquiry. Clutch Justice does not assert intentional manipulation. The documented fact is the five-week gap.
The Supreme Court Is Looking at Barry County Again
On August 3, 2026, Dean Terry Myers moved the Michigan Supreme Court to add an issue to the grounds presented in his pending application and asked permission to file a supplemental brief. On August 7, Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh granted that request. Myers’s supplemental brief is due September 4. Under the Court’s order, the prosecution has 28 days after service to respond.
That single order sits at the end of a procedural chain that runs back through the summer. On June 25, Barry County Circuit Judge Michael Schipper denied Myers’s motion for a new trial following the Supreme Court’s earlier remand. On July 15, the Michigan Supreme Court contacted the Barry County trial court concerning that June 25 opinion and obtained a copy. On July 27, the Court contacted the parties concerning how they intended to proceed now that the remand proceedings had concluded. Myers moved to add an issue on August 3. The Chief Justice granted that motion on August 7.
The Supreme Court has not ruled that Myers is entitled to a new trial. It has not endorsed the substance of the issue he was permitted to add. What is documented is narrower and still significant: the Court has permitted Myers to expand the issues before it and supplement his argument after the Barry County remand proceedings ran their course. That procedural posture is what warrants examining what happened below.
The Evidence That Came Back
The Myers case returned to Barry County on remand because the alleged victim later recanted, or materially withdrew, the allegations underlying the prosecution. Myers presented that development, along with supporting evidence developed on remand, to Judge Schipper. The prosecution contested it. Schipper made findings and denied a new trial on June 25.
That outcome does not resolve the more precise investigative question. A recantation is not automatically truthful, and Clutch Justice is not treating it as such. The question the remand record actually answers is how the system tested evidence that potentially undermined the factual basis of a conviction once that evidence surfaced years later. Myers presented an allegation. The remand proceeding produced evidence and testimony. Schipper made a judicial finding. Myers is now asking the Supreme Court, on appeal, to review that finding. Those are four different categories, and this article is not collapsing them into one another.
The Polygraph Problem
Myers’s remand traces back to Clutch Justice’s reporting on the polygraph examination Michigan State Police Detective Sergeant Ryan Meier administered during the underlying investigation. Meier told Myers the exam showed deception. The chart itself was inconclusive. Myers’s attorney was not in the room, consistent with standard waiver practice statewide, and no record shows Myers being told he could stop the post-test questioning once it turned into an interrogation. In February 2025, the Michigan Supreme Court granted Myers a new trial.
Clutch Justice’s reporting did not stop at Myers. A second matter, out of Cass County, surfaced a materially similar pattern: a claimed failure asserted before the exam was even scored, post-exam statements used in court despite the underlying polygraph record itself going missing from the file, and a prosecutor’s office whose handling of that missing record raised its own disclosure questions. A third case has since surfaced. Clutch Justice is not identifying that person, consistent with how this outlet’s own prior reporting on the third case treated their identity. In that case, a private polygraph examination had already been conducted before prosecutors intervened and directed the person to a state-administered exam with Meier instead. That exam became a pressure point in the plea negotiations that followed. During it, the blood pressure cuff was tightened well past what an accurate reading requires, the room was overheated, and a request to turn on a fan was refused. The chart came back inconclusive. The person was told she had failed. The actual result was not disclosed to her until several days later. An internal affairs referral tied to that case is pending.
Three separate matters, three separate counties, one examiner. Manufactured physical discomfort during the exam. An inconclusive result reported to the subject as a failure. No attorney in the room under a standard waiver. No documented indication, in any of the three, that the person was told at the moment the exam turned into interrogation that they had the right to stop it and call counsel. Michigan Compiled Laws 776.21 requires a polygraph result, pass, fail, or inconclusive, to reach the defense regardless of outcome. Withholding it can amount to a violation under Brady v Maryland. Defendants can lawfully waive an attorney’s physical presence in the room under People v Leonard, but the waiver does not surrender the right to stop the exam and consult counsel once questioning shifts into interrogation, and Michigan courts have invalidated waivers under People v Strieter when the person did not actually understand what they were giving up.
Meier remains in his role. No public disciplinary action has followed any of the three matters, including the one that produced a state supreme court reversal. This article treats the third case as corroboration of a documented pattern connecting Myers to at least two other examinations, not as proof of every allegation in either matter, and the internal affairs referral in the third case is noted here as pending, not as a finding.
Clutch Justice’s courses walk through how to separate allegation from evidence from judicial finding, and how to build a post-conviction record that survives adversarial review.
See the Courses ?Another Case. Another Evidence Problem.
In July 2026, a separate Barry County defendant filed a motion for relief from judgment, a motion for appointment of counsel, motions to disqualify Judge Michael Schipper and the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office, and a request for expedited consideration. A supplemental notice of newly discovered evidence followed. Clutch Justice is not identifying the defendant.
The central evidentiary issue concerns MSP Sgt. Bryan Fuller. Clutch Justice’s prior reporting has documented that Fuller is the named defendant in McCann v Fuller, federal civil rights litigation that produced a $14.5 million jury verdict and an $11 million settlement, and that a document dated September 15, 2023 establishes Barry County’s Prosecutor’s Office had actual written notice of Fuller’s documented credibility record well before the caseload changes hands this piece has previously covered. Michigan Rule of Professional Conduct 3.8(d) requires a prosecutor to disclose evidence tending to negate guilt or mitigate an offense, and under Kyles v Whitley, that duty extends to evidence known to police, not only evidence the prosecutor personally develops. The newly discovered evidence at issue in the second case raises the same category of question this outlet has previously documented in Fuller-connected files: what Barry County officials knew, when they knew it, and what happened to that information once they had it.
Presides over both proceedings discussed in this article. Carries a Judicial Tenure Commission confirmed 2014 misconduct finding. Is now the subject of a pending disqualification motion in the second case.
Elected head of the office named in the disqualification motion in the second case. Carries a confirmed private admonishment under MRPC 3.4(e), disclosed in prior Clutch Justice reporting.
This article is not asserting that Barry County officials knew and covered up the Fuller information as a matter of established fact. That characterization exceeds what a pending motion establishes. The more precise, document-driven question is the one the second case’s own filings now put before the court: what did Barry County officials know about Fuller, when did they know it, and what happened to that information once they had it.
The Reply Brief and the Record That Followed It
A second, distinct evidentiary thread now sits alongside the Fuller material in the second case. Correspondence placed on the record documents that Barry County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Allie Rouse filed an answer in an appellate proceeding on behalf of the office without verification that the filing had reached the self-represented, incarcerated litigant it concerned. A Michigan Department of Corrections response states no corresponding legal mail record exists for the relevant period. A separate State Court Administrative Office letter, closing an earlier administrative inquiry into the same filing, is also part of the record. Clutch Justice has previously documented the underlying mechanics of this kind of failure, including the Michigan Court Rule chain that ties a reply period to actual service, not merely to a proof-of-mailing representation.
Filed the answer at issue in the service record now placed before the court in the second case. An Attorney Grievance Commission complaint concerning that filing remains open. Clutch Justice has separately documented a State Court Administrative Office confirmed proof-of-service discrepancy connected to Rouse’s appellate filings in a different Barry County matter.
An assistant prosecutor’s answer in an appellate or post-conviction proceeding is not a neutral filing. It argues the record below was sound. The reply period exists so the other side can answer that argument before a court relies on it. When the answer never reaches a self-represented, incarcerated litigant, the reply period runs on a foundation that never properly started, whether or not anyone intended that result. That is the evidentiary and procedural problem the correspondence now on the record in the second case documents. Whether it also constitutes a professional conduct violation is the question the open Attorney Grievance Commission complaint exists to answer, not a conclusion this article is reaching on its own.
Then There Is the Docket
On July 1, 2026, the defendant in the second case submitted the principal post-conviction filing package. An exhibit referencing the previously produced communications concerning Fuller, already in Barry County’s possession, appears in the register of actions the following day, July 2, under the event description “EXTRADITION HEARING.” That description does not describe an extradition proceeding. It appears to mislabel an evidentiary submission. Clutch Justice is not asserting that the mislabeling was intentional. The documented fact is that it happened, and that it made the filing harder to locate under any accurate description.
On July 8, the defendant filed a supplemental notice of newly discovered evidence, incorporating the Rouse service-record correspondence, in support of the motion for relief from judgment and the disqualification motions. That is also the point at which the filing effectively disappeared from the register under any description a person searching the docket for it would recognize. It did not reappear intelligibly until August 7, after inquiry was made into its status. Court communication concerning the pending motions occurred on August 5, two days before the register reflected the July filings in a form that could be located.
A significant post-conviction filing does not need to vanish for five weeks to raise a question. It only needs to require repeated outside inquiry before its status becomes clear, in a case where the filing itself documents what Barry County already knew and did not act on.
This is not the first time a filing in Barry County proceedings connected to this case has required outside inquiry before its status could be confirmed. Clutch Justice is not characterizing either episode as deliberate interference. The documented question is narrower and does not require that conclusion to matter: why did significant post-conviction filings require repeated inquiries before their procedural status became clear, and why was an exhibit concerning evidence Barry County allegedly already possessed entered under an event description that does not describe what it was.
The Two Records, Side by Side
Judge Michael Schipper denies Dean Terry Myers’s motion for a new trial following the Michigan Supreme Court’s earlier remand on the alleged victim’s changed account.
The defendant in the separate, unrelated proceeding submits the principal post-conviction package on July 1. An exhibit referencing communications concerning Bryan Fuller appears the next day under the event description “EXTRADITION HEARING.”
A supplemental notice of newly discovered evidence, incorporating the Rouse service-record correspondence, is filed in support of the motion for relief from judgment and the disqualification motions. The filing becomes untraceable on the public register under any accurate description from this point.
On July 15, the Michigan Supreme Court contacts the Barry County trial court concerning the June 25 order and obtains a copy. On July 27, the Court contacts the Myers parties about how they intend to proceed now that remand proceedings have concluded.
Myers moves on August 3 to add an issue and file supplemental briefing. On August 5, court communication occurs concerning the pending motions in the second, unrelated case.
Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh grants Myers permission to add an issue and file supplemental briefing. On the same day, the second case’s register of actions reflects the pending July filings in a form that can finally be located, after outside inquiry.
Two Cases. Different Evidence. Same Question.
Be explicit about what does not connect these cases. Myers’s proceeding concerns an alleged victim’s recantation, questions about investigative and polygraph practices, and a request for a new trial that Schipper denied and the Supreme Court is now reviewing on an expanded record. The second case concerns newly discovered evidence about what Barry County knew regarding a detective’s credibility record, a documented service failure affecting a self-represented litigant’s reply rights, and disqualification motions against the judge and the prosecutor’s office. These are not factually interchangeable. Myers does not prove the second defendant’s allegations. The second case does not prove Myers’s allegations either.
What connects them is institutional, not factual: what obligation does a criminal justice system have when significant evidence emerges after the original proceedings concluded, and does the system genuinely test that evidence, or does it defend the result it reached before the evidence was confronted.
This Is No Longer One Person’s Allegation
The significance of the second proceeding is not that it proves Myers’s allegations. Myers does not prove the second defendant’s allegations either. What exists now is something narrower and, for a reader trying to evaluate Barry County independently, more useful: two separate records capable of independent examination, without relying exclusively on a defendant, a family member, an advocate, or a journalist. There are court filings, docket entries, an SCAO letter, an MDOC response, and a pending Supreme Court order. The independent account referenced earlier regarding Meier adds a documented layer of corroboration to one part of that record. It is not, on its own, a judicial finding, and this article has not treated it as one.
The Supreme Court’s Role
The Michigan Supreme Court has not declared Barry County corrupt. It has not concluded that Schipper mishandled the Myers proceedings. It has not adjudicated the second defendant’s post-conviction allegations, and nothing about a separate Barry County matter being newsworthy at the same time changes that. What is documentable is narrower: the Court previously remanded Myers, the trial court conducted further proceedings, Schipper denied a new trial, the Court subsequently contacted the trial court about that ruling, asked the parties how they intended to proceed, and ultimately granted Myers permission to add an issue and supplement his brief. That means the judicial handling of the Myers proceedings remains subject to appellate scrutiny. It does not mean the outcome is decided.
What Happens Next
In the Myers matter, the supplemental brief is due September 4, 2026. The prosecution has 28 days after service to respond. Watch for additional Supreme Court orders or a disposition on the expanded issue.
In the second case, without identifying the defendant, the motions for relief from judgment, appointment of counsel, judicial disqualification, and prosecutorial disqualification remain pending, along with the request for expedited consideration. Watch for whether the court rules on the disqualification motions before or after addressing the newly discovered evidence on the merits, and for whether the docket produces any further correction or public explanation of the July gap.
Why I Am Watching Both of These at the Same Time
I built the Barry County record this article draws from because the county is legible: small enough that the same names recur, public enough that the filings exist, consistent enough that a pattern holds up across cases that have nothing else in common. I have a personal stake in one of these two proceedings, disclosed at the top of this piece, and I have written this article the way I would write it if I did not. Every claim here is tied to a specific record. Where the record does not yet establish something, I have said so rather than filled the gap with certainty I do not have.
Criminal judgments are supposed to withstand scrutiny because the evidence supporting them withstands scrutiny. New evidence does not automatically make a conviction wrongful. A recantation does not automatically become truth. An allegation of undisclosed or ignored evidence does not automatically establish misconduct. Those limits cut both ways. The fact that evidence arrives after conviction does not make it irrelevant, and the fact that reconsidering it is institutionally uncomfortable does not eliminate the obligation to test it. Two Barry County cases are now asking versions of the same question at the same time. When the evidence changes, does the system examine what changed, or does it protect the decision it already made.
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