Charged, Not Convicted, Still Practicing: The Grand Rapids Attorney Case and Michigan’s Discipline Gap

A Grand Rapids defense attorney who takes publicly funded appointed cases is charged with secretly recording a minor in a bedroom and bathroom. He pleaded not guilty and walked out on a personal bond. Under Michigan’s rules, his law license will not be touched unless and until he is convicted.

I want to start with the part of this story that is easy to skip past. Someone found that camera.

A young person’s closet, a lens aimed at the room, and at some point in early October someone saw it and treated it as exactly what it looked like. Deputies were called. They came. Investigators traced the purchase and the app. By October 20 there were four felony counts on file against a man who has spent more than twenty years inside Michigan courtrooms.

That sequence is not guaranteed, and anyone who has watched these cases for long knows it. It is harder when the person being accused has standing, credibility in rooms that matter, and a professional understanding of exactly how an accusation gets tested and picked apart. Attorneys are not above reproach. A bar card is not a character reference. And the people least equipped to be heard in a case like this are almost always the ones closest to it.

Blumeno is presumed innocent, and the charges are allegations the prosecution has to prove. That is how it should work. What this piece looks at is what the system does in the meantime, because right now the answer is: very little.

What the Charges Say

MLive’s Bradley Massman reported the case on October 20. Kent County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched October 4 after a camera was discovered in a bedroom. According to the affidavit of probable cause, as MLive described it, investigators determined Blumeno bought the camera in June, and it could be accessed through an application found on his phone. Police say the camera was in a juvenile’s closet facing the open bedroom. The affidavit also states that video recovered from the camera showed it had been placed in a bathroom the juvenile used in July 2026.

Clutch Justice is not publishing the location of the home or anything about the household. The fastest way to identify a minor in a case like this is through those details, and they add nothing to understanding what the system does next.

Blumeno faces two counts under MCL 750.539j and two counts of using a computer to commit a crime. He has pleaded not guilty and remains free on a $50,000 personal recognizance bond, meaning he did not have to post cash to be released. His attorney, Damian Nunzio, told MLive the defense will investigate the case itself to see what truly happened.

One note on the charge name. The count is commonly labeled “capturing/distributing” because MCL 750.539j(1)(b), which covers photographing or recording, and (1)(c), which covers distributing or transmitting, share the same penalty. The reporting so far describes recording and remote access. It does not describe any images being sent to anyone else.

How the Counts Stack

Michigan’s surveillance statute was added in 2004. Surveilling someone who is undressed, in a place where they would expect privacy, is a 2-year felony on a first offense. Recording or capturing the image is a separate prohibition and a heavier one: up to 5 years and a $5,000 fine. Distributing the image carries the same 5 years.

The computer counts are where the exposure grows. Michigan’s computer crime statute does not set its own flat penalty for using a computer to commit a crime. It borrows the ceiling of the underlying offense and moves it up a tier. When the underlying crime is a felony with a maximum of at least 4 years but less than 10, using a computer to commit it is punishable by up to 7 years under MCL 752.797(3)(d). The statute also lets the judge run that sentence consecutively with the sentence for the underlying crime.

Run that against the four counts filed here: two 5-year felonies, each paired with a 7-year felony that can be stacked on top of it. Those are statutory ceilings, not predictions. Michigan’s sentencing guidelines, the defendant’s record, and whatever the case turns out to show will decide the actual number, if there is one.

The statute does say that it does not prevent a person from being charged with any other crime committed in the course of the same conduct. Whether anything else is charged depends on what investigators find, and nothing in the public record so far points one way or the other.

Who He Is in the System

MLive described Blumeno as a defense attorney with a Grand Rapids office, licensed since 2003. Public records show more than a private practice.

The Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, the state body that sets standards for publicly funded criminal defense, publishes annual workload data by attorney. The fiscal year 2024 report lists Blumeno, P66063, at the “life” qualification level, the highest tier, meaning a funding system has qualified him to be appointed on cases carrying life sentences. That year shows 128 non-traffic misdemeanor assignments and 49 high-severity felonies across three local systems, about 65 percent of the state’s annual workload maximum. The commission has cautioned that fiscal 2024 was an early reporting year. The fiscal 2025 report, which breaks cases out in more detail, again lists him at the life level across two systems: 115 non-traffic misdemeanors, 49 traffic misdemeanors, 32 low-severity felonies, 7 high-severity felonies, 2 life-offense cases, and 8 probation violations, at about 63 percent of the maximum.

The City of Grand Rapids runs the indigent defense program for its 61st District Court through its Community Development Department. Its call for attorneys describes contracts with dozens of private lawyers, paid an uncapped $145 an hour, invoiced monthly through a city billing portal, with applications reviewed by a committee of court and city staff.

The city’s 2024 payment ledger shows payments to The Law Office of Michael D. Blumeno, PLC of $5,937.50 on January 9, $7,750.00 on February 12, and $8,343.75 on March 11, on the same dates the city paid other criminal defense attorneys. The 2025 ledger shows the payments continuing, including $2,794.50 on January 10 and $4,374.00 on February 12. The city records do not say what each payment covered. The pattern is consistent with the city’s monthly assigned-counsel invoice cycle, and the city’s contract and invoice records would confirm it.

The Gap Between a Charge and a Conviction

Michigan’s automatic suspension rule is clear and has been applied for decades. Under MCR 9.120(B)(1), when a lawyer is convicted of a felony, the license is suspended on the date of conviction, and the matter is assigned to a hearing panel to decide final discipline. Grand Rapids has a recent example: an attorney convicted by a Kent County jury in August 2024 of assault with a dangerous weapon was automatically suspended that day and later received a 30-day suspension by consent.

The rule is silent on charges. A lawyer facing felony counts, even one bound over for trial, keeps an active license unless something else intervenes. Something else can. Attorney Discipline Board records include interim suspensions entered while criminal charges were pending, such as a 2011 Livingston County order suspending an attorney until her charges were resolved. That order, like others in the record, came by stipulation, meaning the attorney agreed to it.

This gap is not a secret inside Michigan’s legal establishment. In 2023, Attorney General Dana Nessel publicly criticized the Attorney Grievance Commission for letting attorneys facing related criminal charges continue to practice, calling it a privilege Michigan extends to no other regulated profession. She pointed to the commission’s ability to ask the Michigan Supreme Court for an injunction when prompt action is required. Former Grievance Administrator Alan Gershel responded that the commission often cannot get the same evidence as law enforcement while a criminal case is open, and that attorneys under criminal investigation typically will not sit for a grievance interview. Both points are true at the same time. The result is that the default, in practice, is to wait.

None of this depends on assuming Blumeno is guilty. A pause in appointments pending review is an administrative decision, the same kind made for teachers, nurses, and police officers every day. It is not punishment. The absence of any rule requiring that decision to be made, documented, and disclosed is the problem, and it would be the problem in any case.

A Small Bar

The defense attorney now representing Blumeno has his own history in high-profile West Michigan litigation. In 2023, Damian Nunzio, with co-counsel Kristyna Nunzio, represented William Null in the Antrim County trial of three men accused of supporting the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In that same trial, Tom Siver represented William’s twin brother, Michael Null. Siver took the unusual step of declining to question any witnesses. The jury acquitted both brothers and their co-defendant.

Siver is now a candidate for the Allegan County bench and the subject of ongoing Clutch Justice reporting, including The Pattern Around Tom Siver and the Lake 16 jet ski report.

Nunzio’s role here is the defendant’s constitutional right to counsel, and he is doing the job a defense attorney does. The overlap matters for a different reason. West Michigan’s criminal defense bar is small. The same names appear across the same courtrooms, the same trials, and the same appointment rosters. When accountability for lawyers depends heavily on lawyers reporting one another, and on systems that only move at conviction, that closeness is part of the structure. It is not a reason to suspect anyone. It is a reason not to rely on informal pressure to do what written rules do not.

Listening Is the First Safeguard

This case exists because someone found a device and was believed. Every downstream protection, from the affidavit to the bond conditions to whatever the court decides, depends on that first step. In cases where the accused is respected, credentialed, or simply better at the language of court than the person raising the alarm, that first step is where things most often fail. People hesitate. They worry about being wrong. They worry about who will be believed.

The answer is not to assume guilt. It is to take the report seriously enough to look, the way the deputies here did, and to build institutions that act on what they find instead of waiting out the clock.

What Fixing It Would Actually Require

The charges against Blumeno will run their course in the criminal courts. The structural gaps around them will still be there when they do. Here is what closing them would take.

The Record Starts Somewhere

I keep coming back to the closet. Whatever happens in Judge Holz’s courtroom today, someone already did the hardest part of this. They saw something, said something, and were taken seriously.

The rest of the system should hold itself to the same standard. A law license is a public trust, and so is a seat on a court’s appointment roster. Neither should run on autopilot while a felony case involving a child works its way through the courts. I’ll be watching this one, and I’ll update it when the record moves.

The camera was found because someone looked. The license stays active because no rule requires anyone to look again until a verdict.