Clutch Justice Weekly, Issue 023: A “Super Drunk” Judge. A Shady Occult Expert. Campaign Material ala Court Letterhead. Let’s Unpack It.

The Clutch Justice Weekly briefing for Issue 023: three unrelated failures with the same shape, a race that just lost its endorsement, a new bizarre-case series, and Detective Club Week Five.

The Lead: Let’s Unpack It

Three unrelated stories this week share one throughline: institutional trust resting on something that doesn’t hold up to a second look.

Part One: Still on the Bench

A Michigan federal judge was charged with super drunk driving after a 2025 crash near his vacation home. He took a plea deal in the spring. He is still on the bench, and the timeline of how long that took to become public is its own problem. Read the plea deal coverage.

Part Two: A Doctorate From Nowhere

The West Memphis Three prosecution called an occult expert to explain to a capital jury why three teenagers would ritually murder three children. He’d never interviewed the defendants. He’d never seen the crime scene. His doctorate came from a correspondence school with no campus. See what backed up the testimony.

Part Three: The Wrong Sheet of Paper

Two Oakland County judges endorsed a Macomb County judicial candidate. Michigan explicitly allows that. What it doesn’t allow is exactly what happened next: the letter went out on official court letterhead, state seal included. See the letter against the guidance.

Institutional Integrity Index: The Letterhead, Scored Against Michigan’s Own Guidance

Authority to endorse grades A. Signature block format grades A. Stationery selection grades F. Public oversight availability, meaning whether a member of the public could ever request the court’s own policy on letterhead use, also grades F, because Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act excludes the judiciary entirely.

Five Minutes in the File: The Name That Didn’t Sign

The court administrator’s name and title sit in the header of the endorsement letter, printed on the same letterhead as the judges’ signatures. She didn’t sign it. Nothing in the record shows she reviewed it, approved it, or knew it would end up posted to a campaign Facebook page. That’s what letterhead actually does: it puts everyone named on it inside a document whether or not they had anything to do with it. Read the full breakdown.

Related Investigations

A party committee walked back its own endorsement the same night on-the-record former employees went public. Four members still didn’t want to. See what changed the vote.

A new recurring feature launched this week: cases so strange they sound invented, backed by real records anyway. First up, an impostor who talked his way into a warship’s operating room. Meet Exhibit WTF.