Barry County’s Sentencing Math has a Familiar Problem: The Facts Keep Getting Stretched

There is something deeply wrong with a criminal justice system when the weakest part of a case can become the strongest part of a sentence. Last month, Clutch Justice examined a Barry County criminal case that raised serious questions about the underlying police investigation, pretrial detention, bond leverage and the pressure placed on a defendant to resolve a case without trial.

The defendant was arrested February 12, 2026, and originally faced seven counts. His bond was revoked at bindover on March 24, and after approximately 110 days in custody, he entered no-contest pleas to three counts on June 3. Four other counts, including felony-level charges, were dismissed. He never received a trial.

Now, according to a longtime family friend following the proceedings, he is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday and is facing a reported 40 to 60 months in prison. As the case moves from plea to punishment, another familiar Barry County problem has entered the picture: offense variables.

First the Allegations. Then the Jail. Then the Math.

Michigan’s sentencing guidelines help courts determine an appropriate minimum sentence by combining a defendant’s prior-record score with points assigned for characteristics of the sentencing offense. Those points matter because a finding worth five, 10 or 25 points can move a defendant into a different cell on the sentencing grid, potentially changing the recommended minimum sentence by months or years.

The prosecution generally bears the burden of establishing facts supporting a disputed offense-variable score by a preponderance of the evidence, a lower standard than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In a courthouse where almost nobody receives a trial, that distinction becomes enormously important. At trial, prosecutors must prove charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt; at sentencing, factual allegations capable of increasing a defendant’s guideline range may be accepted under the lower preponderance standard. That does not make offense-variable scoring improper, but it makes disciplined, evidence-based scoring essential.

We Already Know Almost Nobody Gets a Trial

This is not a theoretical concern in Barry County. Clutch Justice previously reviewed State Court Administrative Office data showing that Barry County Circuit Court recorded 232 criminal dispositions in 2023. Of those, 219 ended in guilty pleas and only three ended in trial verdicts. Not one ended in a jury verdict.

Across Barry County’s District and Circuit Courts combined, there were six criminal trial verdicts that year, while comparable counties produced more: Ionia recorded 15 and Eaton recorded 18. The disparity was not limited to a single year. In 2021, the data reviewed by Clutch Justice showed that just 0.06 percent of Barry County criminal cases went to trial. There is no need to speculate about whether Barry County operates a plea-heavy criminal justice system; the remaining question is what happens after the plea.

If defendants rarely force the government to prove its allegations before a jury, but disputed portions of the government’s narrative can survive the plea and produce additional offense-variable points at sentencing, then the absence of trials becomes even more consequential.

In that system, the prosecution does not merely avoid proving the original case to a jury. The allegations can continue doing work at sentencing: five points here, 10 points there, perhaps 25 somewhere else. Move far enough across the grid and conduct that never produced a jury verdict can still help produce years of incarceration.

What Does the Midwife’s Report Actually Say?

A longtime family friend contacted Clutch Justice ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing with information concerning an allegation of third-party contact. According to that friend, a midwife’s report does not say the defendant asked or instructed the midwife to contact his wife. Instead, the friend says the report describes the defendant asking about signs and symptoms of postpartum depression and whether his wife’s abrupt behavioral change might be consistent with the condition.

Clutch Justice has not yet obtained the final presentence investigation report, sentencing worksheet or underlying midwife document needed to determine how, or whether, the incident is being used in the guideline calculation. That limitation matters, but so does the distinction the longtime family friend describes. Asking a medical professional a question is one act; directing that person to contact someone covered by a no-contact restriction is another.

If the report says what the longtime family friend describes, the government should not be allowed to collapse those acts into a single, more damaging narrative simply because that version is more useful at sentencing.

The controlling question cannot be what someone inferred or what sounds troubling when summarized in court. It must be: What did the defendant actually do, and what evidence proves it?

Fear Is Evidence of Fear. It Is Not Evidence of Everything Else.

According to the longtime family friend, the midwife also reported being afraid for herself and her family. That fear may be entirely sincere and should not be mocked or dismissed, but subjective fear does not automatically establish every factual proposition necessary to increase another person’s sentence.

A sentencing court still must determine what conduct occurred, what evidence establishes it, which offense variable applies and how the proven conduct satisfies that variable’s statutory criteria.

Those questions become especially important if the defendant was electronically monitored at the relevant time and if the midwife has not testified under oath about the incident, as the longtime family friend reports.

Sentencing cannot become a workaround for evidentiary scrutiny.

Barry County Has Been Here Before

In People v. Rumpf, Barry County Circuit Judge Amy McDowell assessed points under OV 19, which addresses conduct involving interference with the administration of justice. The Michigan Court of Appeals concluded that the record did not support the score and remanded the case for resentencing. That was not simply a philosophical disagreement about punishment; it was an evidence problem.

Clutch Justice has since documented OV 19 appearing in another Barry County sentencing dispute, this time before Judge Michael Schipper and involving arguments advanced by the Prosecutor’s Office. The defendant and judge were different, but the institutional temptation was familiar: interpret conduct broadly enough to fit a variable capable of increasing the sentence.

Barry County’s broader sentencing record raises additional concerns. In People v. Velasquez, the original guideline range was zero to six months, but Judge Schipper imposed 36 to 60 months. After appellate intervention, he again imposed a sentence outside the original range. The case returned to the Court of Appeals, which ultimately ordered resentencing before a different judge; another judge later imposed time served.

The Court of Appeals’ decisions in Rumpf and Velasquez are public records.

At some point, these stop looking like unrelated disagreements about sentencing arithmetic and require a broader question: who keeps reaching for the extra punishment, the Prosecutor’s Office, the bench, or both?

Offense Variables Are Not Prosecutorial Bonus Points

Prosecutors already possess enormous power before a case reaches the sentencing grid. They decide which charges to authorize, and those charges affect a defendant’s exposure and can influence bond. Pretrial detention can increase pressure to resolve a case; charges can then be dismissed in exchange for a plea; and prosecutors may finally advocate for offense-variable scores capable of increasing the recommended minimum sentence. Each stage creates leverage over the next.

That is precisely why sentencing cannot become an opportunity to return dismissed, disputed, weakly investigated or tangential allegations to the case through creative guideline scoring.

An offense variable has statutory requirements. The court should score what the Legislature authorized, require proof of the facts necessary to support it and stop where the evidence stops. Zero points are not a failure of prosecution; sometimes zero is simply what the record supports.

And All of This Is Happening Under Active Scrutiny

There is another piece of context that cannot be separated from Wednesday’s sentencing: the Barry County institutions making decisions about this defendant are themselves operating under unresolved scrutiny.

Judge Michael Schipper remains, according to information previously reviewed and reported by Clutch Justice, the subject of a pending judicial-misconduct investigation arising from complaints about his conduct on the bench. An investigation is not a finding of misconduct, and Clutch Justice will not report it as one. Neither, however, is it irrelevant while the judge continues making decisions capable of adding years to a person’s incarceration.

The Barry County Prosecutor’s Office is facing separate scrutiny involving the integrity of an appellate filing and its proof of service.

Clutch Justice previously obtained Michigan Department of Corrections mail records indicating that an appellate brief the Prosecutor’s Office represented as served on a self-represented incarcerated litigant did not arrive through the prison mail system.

The matter was reported outside Barry County and, according to information provided to Clutch Justice, is now under review.

Again, an investigation is not proof of misconduct. An unresolved review into the accuracy of an appellate proof of service nevertheless cannot be dismissed as meaningless background while the same office asks courts to rely upon its factual representations in other criminal cases.

These Are Reliability Issues

Sentencing requires a judge to determine facts. Offense-variable scoring requires prosecutors to characterize evidence accurately and courts to decide independently whether it satisfies the statutory criteria. Appellate litigation requires accurate representations of what was filed, what was served and what the record contains, while judicial oversight exists because judges are expected to administer each of those processes impartially and according to law.

All of those responsibilities depend upon the same thing: the integrity of the record. The unresolved scrutiny does not prove Wednesday’s sentencing will be improper, but it does mean the public should not be asked simply to trust that Barry County got the math right.

Maybe Barry County’s Hiring Problem Isn’t a Salary Problem

There is another consequence of institutional reputation that Barry County should consider: people have to want to work there.

Clutch Justice has previously reported on the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office’s difficulty filling attorney positions. The office has advertised vacancies, struggled to fill seats and attempted to attract applicants by emphasizing what it describes as quality of life.

Salary, geography, caseload and benefits all matter, but so does culture. Lawyers, particularly younger attorneys deciding what kind of career they want to build, are not choosing only a paycheck. They are choosing what they will be asked to do with the power attached to their bar card.

Prosecutors Don’t Just Take Jobs. They Inherit Power.

A prosecutor walks into court carrying authority most lawyers will never possess. Prosecutors can recommend charges that change someone’s life before a jury hears a word, argue for detention, negotiate pleas, seek enhanced sentencing calculations and decide when evidence undermining the government’s case must be disclosed. Ultimately, they can ask a judge for years of another human being’s life, and that power is supposed to come with restraint.

The prosecutor’s job is not simply to win. A prosecutor represents the government, and the government’s obligation is supposed to be justice. Many lawyers enter prosecution because they believe public safety and fairness can coexist: they want to protect victims, prosecute serious crimes and exercise discretion responsibly. They want to know that when they ask the government to take someone’s liberty, they can defend both the evidence and the process that got them there. An office’s reputation matters when it begins suggesting something different.

Nobody Wants to Inherit Somebody Else’s Ethical Problems

Clutch Justice has documented the institutional baggage a new Barry County assistant prosecutor would inherit: questions involving disclosure obligations, offense-variable scoring, appellate reversals, an extraordinarily low trial rate, allegations involving proof of service, years of complaints supplied to county officials and an office operating alongside a circuit bench facing its own unresolved scrutiny.

A new prosecutor did not create any of that, but on the first day of work it becomes part of the institution that prosecutor represents. Every time an attorney signs a pleading, stands behind a sentencing recommendation or tells a judge that the government has satisfied its burden, that attorney’s professional reputation becomes attached to the representation. For someone early in a legal career, that reputation may follow them for decades.

Quality of Life Also Means Being Able to Live With the Work

The legal profession has spent years confronting depression, anxiety, problematic drinking, substance misuse, burnout and chronic stress. Prosecutors, public defenders and judges are not immune; each routinely encounters trauma, conflict, violence and enormous responsibility.

When a government office recruits attorneys, then, “quality of life” cannot mean only a short commute or affordable housing. It also means being able to go home after sentencing and believe the punishment requested was justified, that the person incarcerated received due process, that contradictory evidence was disclosed and that no statute was stretched simply because it could be. That is quality of life, too.

What Is Barry County Asking Applicants to Join?

Clutch Justice cannot say why any particular attorney declined to work for the Barry County Prosecutor’s Office. Salary, a competing offer or a preference to live somewhere other than Hastings could explain an individual decision. Persistent vacancies, however, are organizational data.

When an institution repeatedly struggles to attract people, leadership should examine more than compensation. It should examine reputation, culture, management, ethical climate, professional development, turnover and caseload, and ask whether talented lawyers believe joining the organization will make them proud of the lawyer they become.

There is a significant difference between asking, “Why can’t we find prosecutors?” and asking, “Why would a principled young attorney choose us?” Perhaps the shortage is not merely telling Barry County something about the labor market. Perhaps the vacancy signs are telling the county something about itself.

The Human Cost Cannot Be Corrected on Appeal

Every additional month of incarceration produced by an unsupported offense-variable score affects more than the person wearing the jail uniform. Children lose parents, spouses lose partners and families lose income. Government can reduce a person to a case number and a sentencing grid; a family cannot.

None of this means a person should escape accountability because he has children or a spouse. Victims deserve protection, dangerous conduct can require incarceration and lawful, proportionate punishment remains punishment. But an appellate victory years later cannot return time improperly taken or restore missed birthdays, lost income, damaged relationships and years of childhood. That is why accuracy at the front end matters.

The Board Has Been Told

The Barry County Board of Commissioners cannot direct a circuit judge’s sentencing decision or order the elected prosecutor to charge, or decline to charge, a particular case. That is not the point. The Board controls county resources, receives complaints and approves expenditures. It can request data, hold public discussions and commission independent reviews, and it has received notice.

Clutch Justice has previously documented concerns involving the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office dating to at least May 2023, when Barry County retained outside counsel to respond to a formal grievance involving the office.

In February 2026, Jeffrey Snowden appeared before the Board and placed commissioners on preservation notice while raising allegations involving a fraudulent arrest, disclosure failures, retaliation and obstruction of public records.

In June, Clutch Justice supplied the Board with additional records concerning county prosecutions, law-enforcement credibility and potential disclosure failures.

Paying lawyers to respond to complaints is not the same thing as oversight. There is a difference between protecting county government from liability and protecting the integrity of county government, and after years of notice, continued inaction becomes information of its own.

Barry County Needs Verification, Not Deference

That is why Wednesday’s sentencing matters beyond one defendant. An appellate court has already found Barry County offense-variable scoring unsupported in one case, other county sentences have required repeated appellate intervention, the sitting circuit judge remains under judicial-misconduct scrutiny, and the Prosecutor’s Office is separately facing scrutiny over whether an incarcerated litigant received an appellate brief represented as served. The Board of Commissioners has received years of warnings, and the courthouse produces extraordinarily few criminal trials. Against that background, another assurance that everyone involved knows what they are doing is not enough.

The appropriate response is verification. Produce the sentencing worksheet and identify every offense variable, who requested each disputed score, what conduct is being scored and what evidence establishes it. Separate what the documents actually say from what someone inferred, calculate the guideline range without the disputed points and preserve the record so an appellate court can determine precisely what happened.

Clutch Justice does not yet have the final sentencing worksheet or PSIR and will not declare a particular score improper without seeing the evidence. That is the standard Barry County should follow, too. The people making Wednesday’s sentencing decisions may ultimately be able to justify every point, but after years of complaints, appellate interventions and unresolved questions about institutional reliability, deference cannot substitute for documentation. Barry County needs to show its work.