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What You Need To Know

The Commission published the anonymous version. This is Rita’s Version.

Every year Michigan’s Judicial Tenure Commission publishes a detailed account of the judges it disciplined behind closed doors. It describes the conduct in specifics. It never gives the names.

Clutch Justice took three years of those anonymized summaries, 2023 through 2025, and ran them against the public record. Seven jurists can now be identified. Each identification rests on published appellate opinions, filed court exhibits, disciplinary records, or independent reporting that names the judge outright.

One of them was publicly found by the Michigan Supreme Court to have violated the Code of Judicial Conduct. The disciplinary body’s answer to that was a confidential caution.

Key Points
In 2025 alone, fourteen Michigan jurists received private discipline: five dismissals with explanation, seven cautions, and two admonishments. Thirteen were judges. One was a referee. Two retired judges were handled separately. Not one was named.
Seven identifications are established on the documentary record: Washtenaw County District Judge J. Cedric Simpson, Jackson County Circuit Judge John McBain, Allegan County Circuit Judge Margaret Zuzich Bakker, Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, Wayne County Circuit Judge Cylenthia LaToye Miller, former 34th District Judge David M. Parrott, and Oakland County District Judge Lisa L. Asadoorian.
The public record also exposes errors in the Commission’s anonymous narratives. Its Miller account reverses the reported sequence concerning the handgun’s registration, while its Parrott account describes a guilty plea even though the Attorney Discipline Board records a no-contest plea.
In the Bakker matter the Michigan Supreme Court held publicly that the judge violated the canons. The Commission’s response, described anonymously in its 2024 report, was a private caution.
Roughly eighty entries remain unidentifiable. Every successful match required that the conduct had already generated a public document. Where it did not, the secrecy is total.
Editorial Transparency

Every identification in this article was derived from public sources: the Commission’s own published annual reports, Michigan Supreme Court and Court of Appeals opinions, exhibits filed on public court dockets, Attorney Discipline Board notices, and news coverage. No confidential Commission material was used, and no Commission employee was asked to confirm or deny anything.

The confidentiality obligation in the Michigan Court Rules governs the Commission and its staff. It does not govern journalists, and it does not convert public facts into private ones. Where the record supports only a probability, this article says so and explains what would resolve it.

Complainants, litigants, court staff, minors, and crime victims described in the Commission’s summaries are not identified here, including where identification would be possible. The subject of accountability journalism is the officeholder.

The Reports Say Everything Except Who

The Judicial Tenure Commission is a constitutional body with nine members. It reviews grievances against every judicial officer in Michigan. When it concludes a judge committed misconduct serious enough to warrant public sanction, it files a public complaint and the Michigan Supreme Court decides on censure, suspension, or removal.

Almost nothing reaches that tier. In 2025 the Commission received 698 requests for investigation involving 401 judges. It resolved a different population: 556 requests concerning 180 judges. Of those resolved matters, 540 were closed without action because the allegations would not amount to misconduct even if true, were unfounded or unprovable, or were adequately explained. Five cases were made public.

Between those two outcomes sits the category this article is about. The Commission privately resolves matters through three escalating instruments: a dismissal with explanation, a caution, and an admonishment. The Commission’s own public list of disciplined judicial officers states that these letters are not considered sanctions, that they are confidential, and that their existence cannot be disclosed. Staff are barred from confirming or denying that any investigation of any individual exists at all.

556
Requests resolved in 2025, concerning 180 judges
14
Jurists privately disciplined, none named
7
Identified here across three years

And yet the Commission publishes the conduct. Each annual report devotes a long section to non-public proceedings, describing what the judges did in granular detail. Interim executive director Glenn Page told the Detroit Free Press the details are included primarily for educational purposes, so that judges can see what gets them in trouble and the public can see what the Commission handles.

The result is a document that tells you a Michigan judge jailed someone unlawfully, or defied binding precedent, or emailed the prosecutor during a trial, and then declines to tell you which judge, in which county, so that you might know whether your case is in front of that person on Monday morning.

The Method, and Its Limits

Matching anonymized summaries to real people is legitimate and ordinary investigative work. It is also the easiest way for a publication to defame someone. Clutch Justice applied a two-tier standard for publication, and the tier is printed alongside each identification.

Evidentiary Standard

Confirmed requires that an official record or independent reporting already identify the jurist by name in connection with the described conduct, or that the Commission’s account contains detail unique to one documented public event.

Strong requires an unusual convergence of specific verifiable facts, with any contradiction in the record disclosed in the body of the article.

Anything below that threshold is not published as an identification. It is retained as an open research lead.

The Free Press validated the approach when it covered the 2025 report in August 2026. Reporter Darcie Moran noted that at least one judge was identifiable because the described misdeed matched earlier media coverage, and then named him. Clutch Justice extends the method across three reporting years and into the appellate record.

Confirmed: J. Cedric Simpson

Confirmed

Hon. J. Cedric Simpson

14A-1 District Court, Washtenaw County · 2025 report, Conduct on the Bench

JTC Account
A homeless defendant who had not been able to consult his court-appointed attorney directed a series of expletives at the judge. The judge imposed six consecutive 93-day contempt sentences totaling 558 days. Michigan law permits neither more than 93 days for contempt nor consecutive contempt sentences. The Commission found a Canon 3(A)(1) violation and noted the sentence was widely reported.
Public Record
The 2024 exchange circulated widely on social media. Simpson later reduced the contempt sentences to a single 93-day term. The defendant was identified in contemporaneous coverage as Darrell Lester Jarrell.
Corroboration
The Detroit Free Press independently identified Simpson. He declined to comment.
Prior History
The Michigan Supreme Court suspended Simpson for nine months over his interference in the 2013 drunk driving arrest of his intern and his misleading statements to the Commission.
Disposition
Private caution, 2025.

Confirmed: John McBain

The 2023 report opens its non-public section with an unusual note: the entry describes a 2022 resolution that was omitted from the 2022 report. The conduct it describes is among the most serious in any of the three documents, and the judge is named in a published Court of Appeals opinion.

Confirmed

Hon. John McBain

4th Circuit Court, Jackson County · 2023 report, Conduct on the Bench

JTC Account
After a jury convicted a defendant of second-degree murder, the judge sentenced well outside the guidelines. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction but remanded, holding the sentence could not rest on premeditation the jury had rejected. The Supreme Court denied the prosecution’s application the same day it held elsewhere that sentencing on acquitted conduct violates due process. At resentencing, with both counsel and both higher court opinions before the judge, the judge again exceeded the guidelines and again stressed premeditation. On a second appeal the Court of Appeals found this a willful violation of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The judge also repeatedly interrupted counsel and the defendant during allocution.
Public Record
People v. Dixon-Bey. Dawn Marie Dixon-Bey was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2015 stabbing death of her boyfriend. Guidelines called for 12 to 20 years. McBain imposed 35 to 70. After reversal, he resentenced her to 30 to 70. The Court of Appeals vacated a second time in February 2022 and ordered resentencing before a different judge.
Match Points
The published opinion uses the Commission’s exact operative phrase, describing the departure as a willful violation of controlling precedent from the Supreme Court. It devotes a separate section to the denial of the right of allocution, which corresponds to the Commission’s Canon 3(A)(12) finding. The intervening Supreme Court decision on acquitted conduct is People v. Beck.
Referral Path
The appellate panel wrote that the trial court’s conduct and statements might warrant investigation by the Judicial Tenure Commission. That is how the Commission acquired the matter, and it appears in the opinion itself.
Disposition
Private admonishment on both the sentencing and the allocution conduct.

The McBain entry is instructive about what private discipline is for. A three-judge appellate panel publicly concluded that a sitting trial judge had willfully defied the state’s highest court, removed him from the case, and invited a misconduct investigation. The investigation happened. The result was a letter nobody outside the Commission was permitted to see.

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Confirmed: Margaret Zuzich Bakker

This is the entry that most clearly exposes the design problem, because the underlying conduct was adjudicated in public by the Michigan Supreme Court while the discipline for it was issued in private.

Confirmed

Hon. Margaret Zuzich Bakker

48th Circuit Court, Allegan County · 2024 report, Conduct on the Bench

JTC Account
A judge had ex parte communications with the prosecuting attorney, giving rise to an appearance of partiality toward the prosecutor’s office. The judge sent case-related emails to members of that office over four years, complimenting an attorney’s work, sharing personal feelings about cases, and critiquing the quality of an investigation, all while trials were ongoing. Defense counsel were neither included nor notified afterward. The judge argued the communications fell within the administrative exception to Canon 3(A)(4). The Commission disagreed. The Commission noted the concern was heightened because the judge was a former member of that prosecutor’s office.
Public Record
People v. Loew, decided by the Michigan Supreme Court on July 16, 2024. During a criminal sexual conduct trial, Bakker emailed Allegan County Prosecutor Myrene Koch about the State Police investigation, writing that “This trooper didn’t do a very good investigation.” She followed up asking why the victim had not been referred for a medical examination. Defendant and defense counsel were never told.
Administrative Exception
This was the central contested issue in Loew. The Court of Appeals held the emails were permissible administrative communications. The Supreme Court reversed on that point, holding they were not made for the purpose of managing or executing a proceeding and therefore violated Canon 3(A)(4)(a). The Commission’s summary records the same argument being made and rejected.
Former Prosecutor
Justice Welch’s separate opinion notes the long history of Bakker and Koch working together as prosecutors in Allegan County before assuming their current roles, which corresponds to the Commission’s observation about the judge being a former member of that office.
Four-Year Span
The Loew emails are from 2019. Additional judicial emails to the same prosecutor’s office spanning 2017 through 2020 were filed publicly as exhibits to the Watson Township supplemental amicus brief in the Loew appeal, including a 2017 message praising a trial attorney’s performance during the first day of trial and a 2018 message giving the judge’s personal view of a ruling. That range accounts for the Commission’s four years and its reference to members, plural.
Disposition
Private caution.

The Michigan Supreme Court found on the public record that this judge violated the Code of Judicial Conduct and should have recused herself. The body constitutionally charged with judicial discipline answered with a letter it is forbidden to admit exists.

One attribution point matters here. The ex parte exchange litigated in Loew was between Bakker and Prosecutor Koch. A separate 2020 email in the same exhibit set was written by then-Judge Roberts Kengis and copied to Bakker. Kengis was not a participant in the Loew exchange, and nothing in the Commission’s entry describes him.

Confirmed: Rosemarie Aquilina

Confirmed

Hon. Rosemarie Aquilina

30th Circuit Court, Ingham County · 2023 report, Conduct on the Bench

JTC Account
After sentencing a criminal defendant, and while the case remained pending post conviction and on appeal, the judge responded to online social media comments about the case, made comments quoted in a newspaper article, and released a memoir describing themself as an advocate for the victims. The Commission found the judge told a reporter they ceased to be fair and impartial once a defendant was convicted, which it held violated Canon 2(B). The judge had been cautioned in 2012 and admonished in 2018.
Public Record
Aquilina sentenced Larry Nassar in January 2018. His appeals remained pending until the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave on June 17, 2022. Throughout that period she was active on social media, widely quoted in the press, and publicly identified as an advocate for survivors.
The Memoir
Just Watch Me, published and narrated by Aquilina, was released as an Audible original in December 2020 and in print editions in 2021 and 2022. It is marketed explicitly as a memoir and frames the Nassar sentencing as the culmination of her advocacy. It falls squarely inside the appeal window.
Prior Discipline
The Commission’s 2018 annual report describes privately admonishing a judge for using her position to promote a novel she had written, including failing to prevent her agent from referencing her judicial position in a promotional tweet. Aquilina published the crime novel Triple Cross Killer in December 2017. The 2023 entry’s reference to a 2018 admonishment aligns with that account.
Disposition
Private admonishment for the partisan public statement.

Confirmed: Lisa L. Asadoorian

Confirmed

Hon. Lisa L. Asadoorian

52-3 District Court, Oakland County · 2024 report, Lack of courtesy and respect

JTC Account
The Commission described a judge who repeatedly lost their temper in court. Among the incidents, the judge twice ordered a defendant to “shut [his] mouth” while he attempted to explain probation violations. The same disposition included the judge throwing their glasses after shouting for a jury, calling another defendant “probably a rapist,” imposing an unauthorized requirement that a defendant sell a car, and effectively seizing a non-party’s truck.
Public Record
A federal court opinion concerning access to court recordings identifies Asadoorian as the judge who presided over the matching probation-violation hearing. The opinion states that Asadoorian repeatedly told the defendant to “shut [his] mouth” while he tried to explain the circumstances, revoked his deferred-plea status, converted the charge to a permanent conviction, and imposed five days of community service.
Why It Matches
The unusual wording, probation-violation setting, and defendant’s attempt to explain are identical. Because the Commission describes all of the incidents as the conduct of one judge, the public identification of this incident unmasks the complete disciplinary disposition.
Scope of Corroboration
The federal record independently documents the probation hearing. The remaining courtroom incidents are attributed to the same judge by the Commission’s combined account but have not yet been located in separate public records.
Disposition
The Commission cautioned the judge, required anger-management counseling, and imposed monitoring for an unspecified period.

Confirmed: Cylenthia LaToye Miller

Confirmed

Hon. Cylenthia LaToye Miller

Third Circuit Court, Wayne County, Juvenile Division · 2024 report, Conduct off the Bench

JTC Account
A judge self-reported that TSA discovered a loaded, unregistered handgun in their bag at an airport. The judge was licensed to carry. The gun came from a friend and was unregistered because the friend’s state does not require registration. The judge pled no contest to carrying a gun into an airport and paid a civil penalty. The Commission dismissed with an admonition to take precautions before future travel and to ensure the veracity of future statements to police.
Public Record
On June 8, 2024, TSA screeners at Detroit Metropolitan Airport found a loaded .380 Smith and Wesson in Miller’s purse with a round chambered. Miller held a valid concealed pistol license. She told airport police the gun came from her brother in Ohio, which does not require registration. Her attorney later acknowledged the man was not a relative but a lifelong friend. She pled no contest in September 2024 and received 90 days of probation and $1,400 in costs and fines.
JTC Narrative Discrepancy
The Commission states the judge initially told police the handgun was registered and retracted that. Contemporaneous reporting indicates Miller told police it was not registered. The direction of the misstatement does not match, though the underlying falsehood the Commission flagged, the brother claim, is documented.

Confirmed: David M. Parrott

Confirmed

Hon. David M. Parrott, retired

Formerly 34th District Court, Romulus · 2025 report, Conduct off the Bench

JTC Account
A retired judge was arrested and charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, pled guilty to misdemeanor Operating While Visibly Impaired, and was sentenced to the two days already served at arrest plus costs and fines. The judge agreed not to serve as a visiting judge, and the Commission dismissed the request for investigation.
Public Record
Parrott was arrested on Christmas Day 2018 in Manistee County after his car went into a ditch. A preliminary breath test read 0.109 and a later blood draw showed 0.152. The Court of Appeals opinion records that he displayed a judicial badge at the scene. He left the bench on December 31, 2020. He resolved the Manistee case by plea with credit for two days already served, and the Attorney Discipline Board reprimanded him in December 2022 based on the conviction, in 85th District Court Case No. 18-0849-SD.
JTC Narrative Discrepancy
The Commission says the judge pled guilty. The Attorney Discipline Board notice and local coverage both record a no-contest plea. That is a material difference in the procedural record, and the Commission’s summary is the outlier.
Note on Status
Parrott was a sitting judge when arrested and retired by the time the case resolved. The Commission’s phrasing compresses that sequence. Its interest in the matter, and the condition that he decline visiting assignments, only make sense once he had left the bench.

The plea discrepancy in the Parrott entry is worth reporting for its own sake. The Commission is publishing these narratives as instruction. A summary that misstates whether a judge admitted guilt or declined to contest the charge is instruction with the procedural precision sanded off, and there is no way for a reader to check it against a name.

What Cannot Be Matched, and Why That Is the Story

Roughly eighty entries across the three reports remain unidentified. They are not unidentified because the conduct was minor.

One of the most distinctive clusters is no longer anonymous. The 2024 disposition involving the “probably a rapist” remark, glasses thrown on the bench, an unauthorized requirement that a defendant sell a car, and the effective seizure of a non-party’s truck belongs to Lisa L. Asadoorian. A public federal court record supplies the matching fingerprint: the same judge repeatedly told a probation-violation defendant to “shut [his] mouth” while he tried to explain.

Other serious accounts remain unidentified: a judge who conveyed a message to a criminal defendant’s mother through a mutual friend about how her son should handle his case; a judge who used a child competency examination to pressure a twelve year old into retracting testimony; a judge who accepted gifts from a friend who was simultaneously defrauding a litigant by pretending the gifts were bribes; and a judge who let a suspended attorney practice law in their courtroom after being told about the suspension.

The Structural Failure

Every successful identification in this article required that the conduct had already generated an independent public document: a viral recording, a published appellate opinion, a criminal charge, a disciplinary notice, a filed court exhibit.

The categories that dominate these reports produce none of that. Chronic delay leaves no artifact a litigant can find. Courtroom cruelty vanishes unless somebody is recording. Ex parte contact is invisible by design, and the only reason the Bakker emails surfaced at all is that an unrelated third party filed a public records request with the prosecutor’s office.

The practical effect is that a Michigan litigant can stand in front of a judge who was formally admonished last year for the exact conduct they are about to experience, and has no lawful way to learn it.

The Argument for Secrecy, and What It Actually Buys

The case for confidential discipline is not frivolous. Judicial independence is a real value, and a judge who can be publicly humiliated for a good faith error will become cautious in the wrong ways. Minor lapses corrected privately are corrected more cheaply than lapses litigated in the press. The Commission also handles a large volume of meritless grievances, and public exposure of every inquiry would let disappointed litigants inflict reputational damage at will.

Those arguments have force at the bottom of the scale. They have very little at the top. An admonishment is the Commission’s most serious private instrument. In 2025 two judges received one, and the public knows neither name.

They have least force of all in a case like Loew, where the Supreme Court had already published a finding of misconduct. Nothing was being protected from disclosure at that point except the connection between a known violation and the discipline it produced.

What Would Fix It

Reform

Name judges who receive admonishments. The admonishment is already the Commission’s finding that misconduct occurred. Withholding the name at that tier protects the officeholder, not the process.

End anonymity where a court has already found a canon violation. When an appellate opinion publicly identifies a judge and finds a Code violation, confidential treatment of the resulting discipline serves no protective purpose.

Disclose county and court on every entry. Court level identification would let litigants and local press narrow the field and let voters weigh conduct against the bench they elect.

Require disclosure to parties before assignment. A litigant assigned to a judge cautioned within the preceding two years for the same category of conduct should be told, on the record, with the right to move for reassignment.

The Work Continues

Clutch Justice maintains a working matrix of every non public entry in the 2023, 2024, and 2025 reports, scored for matchability and annotated with the record that would resolve it. Several remain reachable with document work. The judge whose bond modification orders were reversed at least three times before the Commission acted is findable by clustering circuit judges behind reversed bond orders. The escrowed liquor license is findable through municipal council packets and state licensing records. The campaign violations are findable in Secretary of State filings.

Two additional leads have sharpened but have not crossed the publication threshold. A source has identified the judge in the 2024 account involving the perception that defendants would receive harsher punishment for demanding a probation-violation hearing rather than accepting a plea offer; public cases document a similar alleged plea-versus-trial pattern, but the precise off-the-record exchange still needs a transcript, recording, docket filing, or other public artifact. A separate 2024 account involving contempt imposed months after a defendant cursed at a judge during a Zoom pretrial also has a strong pattern candidate, but it is not the same incident as Simpson’s confirmed 558-day contempt case and still requires a matching livestream recording or docket record. Until those records surface, Clutch Justice is withholding both names.

Readers with direct knowledge of any conduct described in these reports, and attorneys who have received or witnessed the described treatment, are invited to make contact. Clutch Justice protects sources and will not publish an identification resting on a single unverified account.

QuickFAQs

Is it legal to identify judges the JTC disciplined confidentially?

Yes. The confidentiality rule binds the Commission and its staff, not the press or the public. Every identification here rests on published opinions, filed court exhibits, disciplinary notices, and news coverage. No confidential material was used.

What is the difference between public and private judicial discipline in Michigan?

Only the Michigan Supreme Court can censure, suspend, or remove a judge, and that follows a public complaint. Below that, the Commission resolves matters privately through dismissals with explanation, cautions, and admonishments. It is barred from confirming that any of them exist.

How many Michigan judges were privately disciplined in 2025?

Fourteen jurists, consisting of thirteen judges and one referee, received five dismissals with explanation, seven cautions, and two admonishments. Two retired judges were addressed separately. None were named.

Can a judge be publicly found to have violated the canons and still be disciplined in secret?

Yes. In People v. Loew the Michigan Supreme Court held publicly in July 2024 that an Allegan County judge violated the Code of Judicial Conduct through ex parte emails with the county prosecutor. The Commission’s response, described anonymously in its 2024 report, was a confidential caution.

Sources
PrimaryMichigan Judicial Tenure Commission, Annual Reports for 2023, 2024, and 2025, Section B, Non-Public Proceedings.
PrimaryMichigan Judicial Tenure Commission, Public Complaints and Disciplined Judicial Officers, and Frequently Asked Questions. jtc.courts.mi.gov
OpinionPeople v. Loew, Michigan Supreme Court Docket No. 164133, decided July 16, 2024.
FilingTownship of Watson supplemental amicus brief and exhibits, People v. Loew, filed February 21, 2023.
OpinionPeople v. Dixon-Bey, Michigan Court of Appeals Docket No. 354866, decided February 1, 2022; and People v. Dixon-Bey, 321 Mich App 490 (2017).
OpinionPeople v. Beck, 504 Mich 605 (2019).
RuleMichigan Court Rules 9.221 and 9.223; MCR 2.003(C)(1)(b)(ii); Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct, Canons 2 and 3.
NewsDarcie Moran, Detroit Free Press, coverage of the 2025 Judicial Tenure Commission annual report, August 11, 2026.
NewsAssociated Press and Newsweek coverage of the February 2022 Dixon-Bey appellate decision.
NewsWXYZ Detroit investigative reporting on the June 2024 Detroit Metropolitan Airport firearm matter and the September 2024 plea.
RecordMichigan Attorney Discipline Board reprimand notice, December 2022, referencing 85th District Court Case No. 18-0849-SD.
OpinionFederal court opinion, E.D. Mich. Case No. 2:25-cv-10939, ECF No. 21, pages 2–3, filed October 28, 2025.
RecordMichigan Supreme Court order denying leave in the Nassar appeal, June 17, 2022.
ReferenceJust Watch Me, Rosemarie Aquilina, Audible Studios, December 2020; print editions 2021 and 2022.
ReferenceNational Association of Women Judges, social media and judicial ethics update, October 2024, citing the Commission’s 2018 annual report.
Cite This Article

Bluebook: Williams, Rita. The JTC Annual Report (Rita’s Version): Who Actually Did What in 2023, 2024, and 2025, Clutch Justice (Aug. 16, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/jtc-annual-report-unmasked/.

APA 7: Williams, R. (2026, August 16). The JTC annual report (Rita’s version): Who actually did what in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/jtc-annual-report-unmasked/

MLA 9: Williams, Rita. “The JTC Annual Report (Rita’s Version): Who Actually Did What in 2023, 2024, and 2025.” Clutch Justice, 16 Aug. 2026, clutchjustice.com/jtc-annual-report-unmasked/.

Chicago: Williams, Rita. “The JTC Annual Report (Rita’s Version): Who Actually Did What in 2023, 2024, and 2025.” Clutch Justice, August 16, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/jtc-annual-report-unmasked/.

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