Left Cold #1: Brittany Shank and the Six Years St. Joseph County Can’t Explain
A forensic sketch and a 911 call sat in a file for nearly six years. The tools that finally reopened…
Rita Williams
Rita Williams is a Michigan-based judicial oversight analyst and founder of Clutch Justice, an investigative platform focused on court system accountability, sentencing integrity, and SCAO policy. Her work examines how courts, policies, and administrative systems operate in practice, with a focus on where process breaks down and harm is created. Drawing on lived experience and systems-level analysis, she writes to make legal structures more readable, expose institutional gaps, and advocate for reforms grounded in both evidence and human impact. Rita’s writing bridges legal analysis, institutional critique, and public education, with a consistent focus on accountability without losing sight of the people most affected by the justice system.
Exhibit WTF, Case No. 02: The Phantom Barber Who Broke Into Bedrooms Just to Cut Hair
Exhibit WTF · Case No. 02 In the summer of 1942, someone crept through open windows in a wartime Mississippi…
Peter Sutcliffe Was Interviewed Nine Times Before His Arrest. A Hoax Tape is the Documented Reason Police Let Him Go Each Time.
Peter Sutcliffe’s name was in police files years before his arrest. Detectives interviewed him nine separate times and let him…
Two Fullers, One County: A Kalamazoo Sheriff, an MSP Detective Sergeant, and Decades of Cases That Didn’t Close
Raymond McCann and Jeff Titus were ensnared in separate wrongful-conviction cases. The law-enforcement institutions at the center of those cases…
Foul Trouble: Seven Years Between the Firepit and the First Arrest in Lorenzen Wright’s Murder
Foul Trouble · Case No. 01 Investigators found burned evidence at Sherra Wright’s home within weeks of her ex-husband’s murder….
Kent County Drops the Sharifi Charges: A Correct Call, Not a Culture Change
Direct Answer Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker dropped the felony assault, resisting, and obstructing charge against Emran Sharifi on September…
Ashley Flowers Cancelled The Deck. Cold Cases Don’t Get That Luxury.
Ashley Flowers ended The Deck this summer at more than 300,000 downloads a week. The format it leaves behind was…
The 2026 Clutch Blanket Mystery, Week 06: The Puzzle Piece Square
A memo with no transfer log attached. The absence is the document, June realizes, the same way a fingerprint’s ridges…
Trial by Mechanism, Part I: The Invisible Deciders
Trial by Mechanism · Part I of VIII The Invisible Deciders A criminal case can end without anyone deciding what…
47 Days: Rick Snyder’s Own Lawyer Donated to His Campaign. Snyder Appointed Him to Court of Appeals.
Nine days after a Michigan Court of Appeals vacancy was announced, Gov. Rick Snyder’s own legal counsel contributed to Snyder’s…
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