Off the Record: A Denied Right to Testify and Four More Cases From Judge Galen’s Courtroom

A man barred from testifying at his own trial. A conviction reversed for an error the reviewing court called “egregious.” A vacated jail sentence, corrected costs, and an attorney’s request to withdraw. The records raise distinct questions about courtroom accountability. Behind them is a city that depends on court revenue to fund its operations—and a consolidation proposal that never took effect.

A Pattern in the Paperwork

Clutch Justice’s reporting on Zsazsa Soward’s reversal centered on a jail sentence that rested on reasoning about her finances the Court of Appeals found unsupported by the record. Four additional cases from Galen’s 38th District Court raise questions about the opportunity to testify, sentencing, financial judgments, and the handling of counsel’s request to withdraw. In Clark, the defendant was not allowed to testify at his own trial, and the reviewing court reversed his conviction. These cases concern different decisions and should be read according to their individual findings.

What follows is a direct account of what each record shows, what it does not show, and what would be required to confirm anything beyond what is already documented.

The Presumption She Didn’t Mention

Consergeria Wilson pleaded guilty and responsible to two nonserious misdemeanors, allowing an unlicensed person to drive and impeding traffic, after being stopped by police in Eastpointe in July 2023. At sentencing on August 30, 2023, Galen reviewed Wilson’s driving history at length. “Sir, your record is atrocious, atrocious,” the sentencing record shows her saying. “You don’t care if you follow the law. You get behind the wheel of a car without a license. You have two drunk driving’s and you jeopardize everybody on the road, everybody, right?” Galen then sentenced Wilson to 60 days in the Macomb County Jail, to be served on weekends, plus 12 months of probation.

Michigan law treats nonserious misdemeanors differently from more serious offenses. Under MCL 769.5(3), there is a rebuttable presumption that a defendant convicted of a nonserious misdemeanor should receive a nonjail, nonprobation sentence, a fine or community service instead. A court can depart from that presumption, but only if it states its reasons for doing so on the record.

Wilson appealed. The Macomb Circuit Court, applying an unpublished but persuasive Court of Appeals decision on point, found that the sentencing record “does not demonstrate that the district court necessarily recognized the statutory rebuttable presumption.” Galen had detailed Wilson’s driving history at length, the circuit court noted, but reciting a defendant’s record is not the same as engaging with the presumption the law requires a court to address before jailing someone for a nonserious offense. The circuit court vacated the sentence and remanded the case for resentencing.

The $505 Nobody Can Explain

Mazin Hermiz’s case took a different path to the same underlying problem. Hermiz’s Judgment of Sentence, entered February 14, 2023 in 38th District Case No. 22-9599, assessed financial obligations that went beyond what had actually been stated at the sentencing hearing. By April 2023, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office and Hermiz’s defense counsel had reached agreement on the point without a contested hearing. Their stipulated order states plainly that “the court may not enter a Judgment which assesses financial obligations against the Defendant which were not placed on the record at sentencing.” The properly noticed total came to $350, itemized as $200 in fines and costs, a $25 special assessment, a $50 state fee, and a $75 crime victims rights fee. A separate $505 in “other costs,” appearing on the written judgment but never spoken at the hearing itself, was vacated outright.

Unlike Wilson, this was never litigated to a written opinion. The prosecutor’s office agreed the judgment was wrong once the discrepancy was raised, and the circuit court entered the stipulated order and closed the case. No judge wrote an opinion explaining how $505 ended up on a judgment without ever being said out loud in court, and the underlying district court record does not identify who added it or when. What the order proves: money that governed what Hermiz owed the court was never subjected to the basic due process requirement that a defendant hear, on the record, what he is actually being ordered to pay.

The Attorney Who Asked to Leave

The third record is not an appeal or a correction. It is a same-day transcript, and it involves neither a jail sentence nor a dollar figure, only a request that was not granted the way it was asked for.

On April 29, 2026, attorney John Gerlach appeared before Galen for a pretrial hearing on behalf of his client, Franklin Eugene Dyer II. Gerlach told the court his client wanted new counsel, and Galen adjourned the matter a week so Dyer could hire someone else, with Gerlach remaining on the file in the meantime. Gerlach then asked for something more immediate. “Your Honor, may I ask to be relieved as of today?” he said, according to the transcript, before explaining why: “I would like the record to be clear that today during my discussions with Mr. Dyer, I felt physically intimidated by him and his physical reaction toward me. That’s why I’m asking for the extraordinary relief of asking to be withdrawn from today. I even asked your Court Officer to be present today.”

Galen’s response did not grant that request. “Okay. All right, so I’m going to have you a file a motion to withdraw,” she said. “You’re going to adjourn one week to hire your own attorney and I will hear your motion next week, Mr. Gerlach.” Gerlach remained counsel of record. The transcript ends there; what happened at the following week’s hearing is not part of the record obtained for this piece.

Mark Anthony Clark: The Defendant Who Was Not Allowed to Testify

A courtroom record can be incomplete because a required finding was never made or a financial obligation was never stated. Mark Anthony Clark raises a different issue: he was not allowed to testify at his own trial before Judge Kathleen Galen.

In People v. Clark, No. 2024-000219-AR, the 16th Circuit Court in Macomb County called that error “egregious” and reversed his conviction. The court issued its Opinion and Order on January 23, 2025.

The circuit-court docket identifies the appeal as Clark, Mark Anthony vs. People of the State of Michigan, No. 2024-000219-AR, and lists James M. Maceroni as the case judge. Galen presided over the underlying trial; Maceroni was the judge assigned to the circuit-court appeal.

The distinction matters. Wilson concerns what the sentencing court needed to address before imposing a sentence. Hermiz concerns costs that appeared in a judgment without being stated at sentencing. Clark concerns whether the accused was allowed to give his own testimony before the trial ended in a conviction. The reviewing court’s response was reversal.

Source: People v. Clark, No. 2024-000219-AR, 16th Circuit Court (Macomb), Opinion and Order, Jan. 23, 2025.

What Connects Them

These records concern both the decisions made in court and the opportunity to be heard before those decisions become final. Clark’s conviction was reversed after he was not allowed to testify. Wilson’s sentence was vacated. Hermiz’s financial obligation was corrected by stipulation. Dyer’s transcript records an attorney’s safety concern and request for immediate withdrawal, without itself establishing a legal violation. Soward, as previously reported, involved sentencing reasoning unsupported by the record.

They do not all establish the same procedural error. They do show why accountability requires looking closely at what happened before a conviction, sentence, financial obligation, or decision about representation was allowed to stand. In Clark, the reviewing court’s description—“egregious”—and its reversal make the consequence concrete.

The same gap shows up one level up, in the courthouse’s own personnel. Clutch Justice’s separate reporting on Galen’s Cork Wine Pub dispute documents that Heather Froias, the person who now serves as the official court reporter keeping the record of what happens in Galen’s courtroom, was named the Designated Record Keeper on Galen’s own 2020 campaign committee filing. The person responsible for the accuracy of the record examined throughout this piece is not a stranger to Galen’s political operation.

A Court Built Past Capacity—and a Fix Left Unfinished

Eastpointe had an opportunity to address this problem years ago. The State Court Administrative Office identified the imbalance. The Legislature changed Michigan law to permit consolidation. The required local approval process was never completed. The standalone 38th District Court remained.

Now the 2025 Judicial Resources Recommendations estimates that Eastpointe needs 1.87 judges and puts its single judge’s workload at 187 percent. Filings increased from 14,517 in 2023 to 17,240 in 2024. SCAO recommends another judgeship, but also identifies consolidation with the 39th District Court as an alternative that would eliminate the need for that additional position.

The earlier proposal was specific. In 2017, SCAO estimated that Eastpointe needed 1.5–1.8 judges, while the three-judge 39th District Court serving Roseville and Fraser needed only 2.2–2.4. It recommended one consolidated court retaining all four judgeships. It also offered a concurrent-jurisdiction plan as an alternative way to share the workload. Space was already an obstacle: SCAO had reviewed Eastpointe’s needs in 2015 but declined to recommend another judge because the courthouse lacked room.

The consolidation provisions of MCL 600.8122, enacted through 2018 PA 6, required resolutions from Eastpointe, Roseville, and Fraser before January 1, 2020. Consolidation would have abolished the standalone 38th District and placed all three cities in a four-judge 39th District. The incumbent 38th District judge would have transferred to the merged court for the remainder of the elected or appointed term. This was a proposal to reorganize the courts and distribute work, not eliminate one of the four sitting judgeships.

Roseville Took It Up. What Happened Next?

Roseville’s involvement is documented. Its September 8, 2018 special City Council meeting minutes list a discussion item titled “Proposed 39th District Court Consolidation.” City Manager Scott Adkins and City Attorney Tim Tomlinson presented the issue and answered questions from the mayor and council.

Those minutes establish discussion, not adoption of a consolidation resolution. They do not supply the underlying financial analysis or explain why the three-city process failed. The records identified for this update do not establish which municipalities adopted and filed the required resolutions, which did not, or why. That missing record cannot fairly be turned into a finding that Eastpointe alone was the holdout.

The statute makes the financial stakes concrete. A municipality approving consolidation voluntarily accepted “all expenses and capital improvements that may result from the consolidation.” The decision therefore involved municipal costs as well as judicial workload. How the cities proposed to divide revenues, expenses, staffing, facilities, and administrative authority remains a question for the negotiating records.

Eastpointe Depends on Court Revenue to Fund City Government

Eastpointe depends on money collected through its court to fund city operations. Fines and fees paid by people brought into the justice system are part of the city’s financial foundation. That dependence belongs at the center of the discussion about why Eastpointe preserved its standalone court while a state-authorized consolidation went unfinished.

Eastpointe’s FY2022–23 adopted budget, in its court revenue tables for 2021, reports $2,552,833 generated by the one-judge 38th District Court. The same table reports $2,919,988 for the three-judge 39th District Court. That comparison shows the scale of collections; it does not establish either court’s efficiency or the amount a city would gain or lose through consolidation.

Eastpointe did not keep the entire $2.55 million. The disbursement table reports approximately $1.9 million to the City of Eastpointe, $568,576 to the State of Michigan, and $54,521 to Macomb County. The city figure is rounded in the source and should not be treated as a precise accounting reconciliation.

The dependence is explicit in the city’s own appropriations ordinance. Its FY2020–21 adopted budget counted on $1,615,724 in District Court revenue toward $24,477,528 in estimated General Fund revenues—about 6.6 percent of the total. City government budgeted for that money. Court collections were built into the plan for paying the city’s bills.

Using the approximately $24.48 million FY2020–21 adopted General Fund budget as a scale comparison, total 2021 court revenue was equivalent to about 10.4 percent of that budget. The approximately $1.9 million disbursed to Eastpointe was equivalent to about 7.8 percent. These are comparisons of scale across the reported 2021 court figures and the fiscal-year budget, not a same-period audit or a calculation of net revenue after court expenses.

The city’s budget also lists a separate Court Building Fund. And concern about reliance on court collections predates this proposal: the ACLU of Michigan reported that Eastpointe collected more than $2 million annually in court fines and fees in 2013 and 2014, nearly 11 percent of its operating budget at the time.

This is financial dependence on court collections. The city has a fiscal interest in the money the court brings in, and residents have every reason to demand scrutiny of that interest when officials decide how the court should operate. The unresolved question is whether protecting that revenue influenced the failure to consolidate. Answering it requires the 2018 financial terms and correspondence; a merger would not necessarily have ended Eastpointe’s share of court revenue.

This Is Why Michigan Must Change How Courts Are Funded

Eastpointe’s dependence on court income illustrates exactly why Michigan is pursuing court-funding reform—and why the state MUST change how courts are funded. When a city counts on fines and fees to pay its bills, it has a financial interest in collecting money from people brought into court. That interest belongs in every discussion about court expansion, consolidation, and accountability.

Michigan’s own reform work identifies this structural problem. The November 2025 Alternative Funding for Trial Courts implementation recommendations describe the conflict between judicial impartiality and pressure to generate operating revenue, along with the burden placed on people least able to pay. Public Act 47 of 2024 directed SCAO to develop a plan implementing the Trial Court Funding Commission’s recommendations. The proposed model combines greater state funding, continued local support, and centralized court collections, with funding distributed according to operational needs.

That proposal still includes court-generated revenue. Clutch Justice’s position is that reform must break the dependence that makes people’s legal troubles a source of expected government income. Courts need reliable public funding so their financial health does not depend on extracting money from the people appearing before them. Michigan must fund justice as a public responsibility. Eastpointe’s budget shows why that change cannot remain an unfinished reform project.

The Other Route: Another Judgeship and a New Building

Eastpointe is now pursuing a different institutional outcome: a standalone court with room for two judges. In a February 2026 state funding request, the city sought $2 million for its new police and district court complex. The request says the building will accommodate two full-time judges and describes the second judgeship as state-approved. It also cites the existing facility’s age, maintenance needs, police-space constraints, and safety requirements. The request is evidence of the city’s plan and requested funding, not proof that this particular appropriation was awarded or that construction is complete.

Galen publicly welcomed the additional capacity. Reporting on the February 2026 State of the City address describes her discussing the workload, a second judge, and the need for the new courthouse. Those remarks document her position on the current project; they do not establish her role in the failed 2018–19 consolidation process.

SCAO’s 2025 analysis projects different outcomes: workload per judge of 94 percent with a second Eastpointe judge, or 116 percent with consolidation. The options are not identical, but SCAO expressly says consolidation would remove the need for the additional judgeship. That warrants a public explanation of the choice. It does not establish that consolidation would have eliminated every police or court facility expense, or provide a dollar estimate of avoidable construction costs.

The Missing Middle Is in the Records

The threshold question is straightforward: did Eastpointe file a resolution, did Roseville, and did Fraser? The statute required the cities’ clerks to file adopted resolutions with the State Court Administrator. That makes SCAO’s files a logical starting point for establishing who approved the proposal and when.

The next records to obtain are the 2017–19 consolidation correspondence, resolutions, financial and operational analyses, and any documented objections held by SCAO; and Roseville’s briefing materials for the September 8, 2018 discussion, including memoranda, cost projections, draft resolutions, presentations, and communications among the cities and courts. The concurrent-jurisdiction alternative belongs in that review too: was it pursued, implemented, rejected, or left unresolved?

The public record identifies the earlier solution and the current expansion plan. What remains unresolved is the decision between them: who declined or failed to approve consolidation, why, and what financial or operational terms were on the table. Residents deserve that answer before the workload crisis is presented as though another Eastpointe judgeship were the only available response.

What Attorneys Describe Off the Record

Several attorneys, interviewed separately, describe matters being handled at sidebar rather than placed on the record, including during proceedings conducted over Zoom, where substantive discussion happens off the recorded portion of the hearing. The same attorneys describe cases pushed toward pretrial hearings even when the prosecutor’s own office is prepared to resolve or dismiss them. And they describe hearings scheduled, and clients required to appear, on dates when Galen herself was on vacation, rather than adjourned in advance, so that the case is adjourned that day instead. Separately, several of the same attorneys describe Galen publicly attributing courtroom delays to understaffing while, they say, closely controlling the court administrators responsible for addressing it.

That description lines up with the documented record above. When attorney John Gerlach told Galen on the record that he felt physically intimidated by his client and asked to be relieved from the case that same day, she didn’t grant it in the moment. She required a written motion, adjourned the matter a week on a schedule of her own choosing, and kept him on the file until then.

A similar pattern shows up in who stays. Judge Tanya Grillo, before her own appointment to the Macomb County Circuit Court in January 2026, spent years working inside the 38th District Court as part of her role managing indigent-defense coverage across the county; her own 2020 testimonial for Galen’s campaign describes working “side by side with her in the 38th District Court trenches over the last several years.” According to multiple sources in the Macomb legal community, she left a six-figure position there fairly quickly. Clutch Justice has not independently confirmed the timeline or the reason for her departure.

A more serious version of the same pattern, according to these attorneys, goes beyond sidebar discussion. They describe hearings, held both in person and over Zoom, where the matters actually addressed go beyond scheduling, but which are logged as Status Conferences rather than substantive hearings. Michigan Court Rule 8.108(B)(1) requires a verbatim record of testimony, rulings on motions, and the reasons for those rulings; that requirement does not turn on what label a proceeding is given. Multiple attorneys separately describe requesting transcripts for hearings of this kind and being told none exist: hearings that, according to the people appearing in them, address more than scheduling while carrying a label Michigan’s own court rules do not exempt from the verbatim-record requirement.

These accounts raise a related question about the availability of a reviewable record: something governing how a case moves, or how a courtroom runs, without leaving behind the kind of record that would let anyone outside that courtroom confirm it. In the case of the mislabeled hearings, that missing paper trail is not a hole in the reporting, it is the substance of what these attorneys are describing. A transcript request that comes back saying no record exists is itself a form of documentation of the practice, not an absence of one. None of it is neutral with respect to the caseload crisis above, either. A pretrial the prosecutor did not request, an appearance required only to be adjourned, a hearing held off the record, each adds to the docket rather than merely reflecting a docket that was already too large.

Why This Matters Now

Kathleen Galen is on the November 3, 2026 ballot for re-election to the 38th District Court, opposed by Richard Goodman. Clutch Justice has separately reported on Galen’s pre-bench role in a liquor-license dispute that independently matches an anonymized 2024 Judicial Tenure Commission admonition, and on the Court of Appeals reversal of her sentencing of a pregnant defendant, Zsazsa Soward, over an ability-to-pay assumption the appellate panel called unsupported by the record. The additional district-court records are not anonymized; they document specific proceedings and outcomes. The Galen-related files include a vacated sentence, a stipulated correction, a same-day transcript, and the circuit-court reversal in Mark Anthony Clark’s case after he was not allowed to testify at his own trial. Each source must be read for the conclusion it actually supports.

The 38th District Court is where most Eastpointe residents encounter the justice system, not through felony trials, but through the misdemeanors, fines, and pretrial hearings that make up the bulk of a district court’s docket. A jail sentence vacated after the fact, a $505 debt nobody can explain, and an attorney kept on a case despite a stated safety concern raise different questions about courtroom decisions and the documentation available to review them. Michigan’s own workload data shows a court already operating far past its designed capacity. The record does not establish why the pattern attorneys describe exists. The practices described by attorneys, if substantiated, could contribute to avoidable appearances and delay; the reporting does not quantify their effect on SCAO’s workload estimate. Separately, the consolidation history raises an institutional accountability question: why was a state-authorized option for sharing the workload left unfinished while Eastpointe moved toward a second judgeship and a larger facility? Eastpointe’s financial dependence on court collections makes that a question about city revenue as well as court administration. The record still needs to establish who made the consolidation decision and why.

Invest in People, Not More Court Involvement

A city that depends on court fines and fees has a financial stake in collecting money from the people it brings into court. Clutch Justice’s position is that residents’ legal troubles should not be a funding strategy for city government. Eastpointe should reduce that dependence, and the public deserves a full accounting of how it shaped the choices made about this courthouse.

Clutch Justice’s position is that Eastpointe is an aggressively policed community whose residents need investment in their lives, not more pathways into Galen’s courtroom. The response to an overloaded docket should include asking why so many people are being drawn into the system in the first place—and whether the resources spent processing, supervising, and punishing them would do more good invested in housing stability, reliable transportation, mental-health care, and access to work.

Probation is not a harmless alternative simply because it happens outside a jail. Reporting requirements, repeated court appearances, financial obligations, and the threat of further punishment can destabilize the very employment and family responsibilities people need to maintain. Wilson’s sentence, which included 12 months of probation as well as jail time, makes the stakes concrete: the presumption discussed in that case was against both incarceration and probation for a nonserious misdemeanor.

Residents should not be forced into unnecessary probation or have their lives upended by avoidable court involvement with Galen. A reversal or corrected judgment matters, but it cannot automatically give someone back the time, stability, or opportunities a case may have cost them. Eastpointe should put resources into helping people build secure lives. The measure of public safety should include whether people can keep their homes, their jobs, and their families intact—not merely how many cases the court can move through its docket.