Almost every account of this decision describes it as a constitutional ruling. It was not. Getting the holding right is not pedantry, because the narrow statutory ground the court chose is precisely why, four years later, it would help almost nobody else.
People v Peeler held two things. MCL 767.3 and MCL 767.4 do not allow a judge to issue indictments in criminal proceedings. And if a criminal process begins with a one-man grand jury, the accused is entitled to a preliminary examination before being brought to trial. Both holdings are statutory. The court did not reach a constitutional question, and the widespread characterization of the ruling as a separation-of-powers or due process decision is inaccurate.
Why does it matter whether the holding was statutory or constitutional?
Because retroactivity analysis treats them differently, and because a constitutional holding about the fairness of a trial would have been far harder to confine. The statutory framing is what allowed the court in 2026 to characterize the rule as concerning the process of getting to trial rather than the fairness of the trial itself.
Did the prosecution have an alternative route?
Yes. The ordinary route, which the opinion describes as how almost everyone in Michigan is charged, is a criminal complaint issued by a prosecutor followed by a preliminary examination in open court.
What was People v Green?
A 2018 Court of Appeals decision. Peeler overruled it to the extent it held that the one-person grand jury procedure serves the same function as a preliminary examination.
Does this mean the charged officials were innocent?
It means no adjudication occurred. The charges were resolved on the validity of the charging instrument, which produced no finding either way about the underlying allegations.
The Sentence That Frames the Case
Chief Justice McCormack opens the Peeler opinion by observing that Nancy Peeler, Richard Baird, and Nicolas Lyon were state employees investigated and charged for their roles in the Flint water crisis, but that for some reason they were not charged the way almost everyone in Michigan is charged, with a criminal complaint issued by a prosecutor followed by a preliminary examination in open court at which the accused can hear and challenge the prosecution’s evidence.
I want to sit with that framing, because it tells you what kind of decision this is going to be.
The opinion does not open with the gravity of the Flint water crisis. It does not open with separation of powers or with the antiquity of the statute. It opens with a comparison between how these defendants were charged and how everyone else is charged, and it flags the deviation as requiring explanation.
That is a statutory judge’s opening. The question being set up is not whether the mechanism is constitutionally tolerable. It is what the statute permits, and why a departure from ordinary practice was thought to be available.
The Procedural Posture
Peeler, Baird, and Lyon were charged with various offenses in Genesee Circuit Court for actions taken as state employees during the Flint water crisis. At the request of the Attorney General’s office, the prosecutor proceeded under MCL 767.3 and MCL 767.4. Judge David Newblatt served as the one-man grand jury, considered the evidence behind closed doors, and issued indictments. The cases were then assigned to a Genesee Circuit Court judge.
Peeler and Baird moved to remand for a preliminary examination. The circuit court denied the motion, holding that indicted persons have no right to a preliminary examination, which was a correct statement of Michigan law after Glass. They sought interlocutory review in the Court of Appeals, which declined. The Supreme Court heard argument on May 4, 2022 and decided the cases on June 28, 2022.
The circuit court’s ruling was not an error under the law as it stood. Glass had held in 2001 that an indictee has no right to a preliminary examination, and Green had held in 2018 that the one-person grand jury procedure serves the same function as one. The trial judge applied binding precedent. What made the outcome wrong was an assumption embedded beneath both of those decisions, which neither had examined.
What the Court Held
The court framed the first issue as whether MCL 767.3 and MCL 767.4 confer charging authority on a member of the judiciary. Having construed the statutory language, it concluded that the statutes authorize a judge to investigate, subpoena witnesses, and issue arrest warrants, and that they do not authorize a judge sitting as a one-person grand jury to issue an indictment.
On the second issue, the court agreed that the statutory language provides a right to a preliminary examination, noting that it had said as much before in dictum. Duncan had identified MCL 767.4 as containing specific statutory language providing for a preliminary examination, pointing to the statute’s reference to a hearing on the complaint or indictment and its disqualification of the inquiring judge from serving as examining magistrate at that hearing.
The holding, as later courts have summarized it, is that defendants subjected to a one-person grand jury are entitled to a preliminary examination before proceeding to trial, and that a judge may not issue a criminal indictment under the one-man grand jury law.
A court that wanted to end this practice permanently and for everyone had a constitutional route available. It took the statutory one instead. That choice is defensible as judicial restraint, and it is also the reason the remedy stopped where it did.
The Clutch Justice course track covers reading appellate opinions from primary sources, separating holdings from dicta, and checking secondary characterizations against what a court actually decided.
Browse the CoursesWhat Nearly Everyone Reports, and Why It Is Wrong
Coverage of this decision, including from outlets I otherwise rely on, describes it as having ruled the one-man grand jury unconstitutional, or as resting on separation of powers because it merged the roles of judge and prosecutor, or as a due process ruling.
None of that is what the opinion holds. The court construed two statutes and found they do not contain a power that had been assumed. The separation of powers framing is a reasonable description of why one might think the practice troubling, and legislators advocating repeal have used constitutional language in exactly that way. It is not the ratio of the decision.
The court found the one-man grand jury unconstitutional, violating separation of powers or due process, and struck it down.
Cannot explain why the same court declined to apply the rule retroactively in 2026.
MCL 767.3 and MCL 767.4 do not authorize a judge to issue an indictment, and a process beginning with a one-man grand jury entitles the accused to a preliminary examination before trial.
Explains both the 2022 dismissals and the 2026 limitation, because the rule concerns how a case gets to trial.
A holding about trial fairness would have been difficult to confine to pending cases. A holding about the route to trial was not.
Examined in Part IV, where the retroactivity analysis turns on precisely this characterization.
What Ended, and What Did Not Happen
The consequence for the Flint prosecutions was terminal. Charges against nine former officials, including a former governor, did not survive. A Genesee County judge subsequently treated the indictments as void from inception, the charges against the former governor were dismissed, and in September 2023 the Supreme Court declined to revive the cases.
What did not happen is the part that gets compressed in the retelling. No court determined whether any of the allegations were true. There was no acquittal, because there was no trial. There was no finding of insufficient evidence, because the evidence was never weighed. The prosecutions ended on the instrument that started them.
Both sides of that are worth stating plainly. The charged officials were never convicted of anything and are entitled to be described accordingly. The people of Flint received no adjudication of allegations concerning contaminated water in their homes. Neither group got a finding, and the reason is identical for both.
A charging mechanism defect terminates a prosecution without producing any record of what the evidence showed. The material gathered during the one-man grand jury proceedings remains restricted by MCL 767.4, which makes disclosure of information presented to such a grand jury a misdemeanor. The result is a prosecution that ended with no findings and an evidentiary record that cannot be examined.
Why This Matters
The reason I have spent an installment on the difference between a statutory and a constitutional holding is that the difference is about to become the entire story.
Read as a constitutional ruling, Peeler is a decision about fundamental fairness, and a decision about fundamental fairness is difficult to withhold from people who were convicted under the condemned practice. Read as it was actually written, Peeler is a decision about which official may sign a charging document and what hearing must follow, and that is a decision a later court can characterize as concerning the process of getting to trial rather than the fairness of the trial itself.
In February 2026, that is exactly what happened.
The people who benefited from Peeler were three former state officials whose cases were pending on interlocutory appeal when it was decided. Everyone convicted through the same mechanism in the preceding century was in a different procedural position, and the narrow ground the court selected in 2022 is what made that difference decisive.
Part IV takes up People v Robinson, decided February 4, 2026. Todd Robinson was indicted in 2012 by a judge sitting as a one-person grand jury, denied a preliminary examination, and convicted of first-degree murder. The Supreme Court agreed that Peeler announced a new rule of law, and held it does not reach him.
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