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InnovativeHealthMag.com
The high-profile Michigan
attorney Michael P. Manley has
fought many legal battles. His
name is known across America
as a criminal defense attorney,
but his real fame—the respect
he receives—is based on his
compassion and intelligence, and his
career-long work for clients in many areas
including personal injury, employment
discrimination and corporate law.
Today, his current and perhaps most for-midable
challenge is in the court of Public
Opinion. He is passionate about reform of
the judicial system. Not one case before one
judge…but changing the culture of the legal
system, judicial priorities, and such matters
as mandatory sentences. Michael Manley lists
the four factors America must confront that
historically have guided our sentencing prin-cipals:
appropriate punishment, deterrence,
protection of society and rehabilitation.
He maintains that it is time—overdue, in
fact—to look at these factors in a new light.
The state of Michigan might lead the United
States in the number of qualified, powerful,
visionary, and successful legal advocates per
capita. Michael Manley is at the head of that
special class. He has been practicing law for
28 years; as a board certified criminal trial
specialist (National Board of Trial Advocacy),
he is considered one of the most powerful
criminal defense attorneys in the country.
The Flint attorney has earned a spot on the
list of Michigan Super Lawyers (fewer than 5
percent of lawyers in the state are selected).
In recent years, his specialty has been
criminal law. Now specializing in criminal
defense, Manley explains, “The people
dictate what kind of lawyer you become. As
I became more successful in criminal cases,
more people started hiring me for criminal
law. It’s the public that actually decided.”
Manley often travels the country speaking
on national media platforms, discussing
many of his high-profile cases. But lately his
attention, spurred by the public’s growing
concerns, has been the overall health of
the judicial system itself. “At the moment,”
he says, “the system itself is undergoing
extensive rehabilitation.” At times he has
felt that America’s courts might face virtual
life support, given what he explains is the
system’s unhealthy habit of putting politics
before judicial reform.
He points to politicians’ custom of using
slogans to define our criminal justice
system—the vogue to say “I’m tough on
crime,” or “I am firm but fair”—and when
mere slogans over serious substance was
translated into legislation. He maintains that
such legislation nearly bankrupted Michigan
as a state financially... and, in his opinion,
bankrupted Michigan morally.
Manley explains that harsh mandatory
minimum sentences related to drug
offenses during the early 1990s saw people
receiving life sentences in prison for more
than 650 grams of cocaine, and 20 years
as a minimum sentence for 225 grams of
cocaine. Those harsh mandatory minimums,
he maintains, were based on no hard
empirical evidence that they stopped the
drug trade, or made our communities safer.
He asks about what society must address
when laws are made, when sentences are
given. Are they effective? Do they provide
proper punishment?
Michigan's major focus was punishment,
Manley says, and the state began building
more prisons, locking more people up, and
seeing prisons as viable business models.
When such principles guide policy, he says,
a huge problem inevitably follows.
Michigan is undertaking a rehabilitation, how-ever,
from those types of laws that have near-ly
crippled its judicial system. In 2008, there
was a large budget deficit and the economy
was sinking. When both political parties
looked at the budget, they saw that prisons
were taking a huge percentage of the dollars.
Dollars were being diverted from schools, for
instance, to build prisons—using the dollars
to house many non-violent offenders.
From a philosophical and moral standpoint,
Manley maintains, Michigan based its
system on slogans and political rhetoric. But
he believes those days are in the past.
In his persuasive presentation, shared in
speeches and articles, Manley maintains
that politicians didn’t win elections by
promising to spend more tax dollars on
“mental health treatment,” but by being
“tough on crime;” and what followed was a
shift from mental health funding and drug
addiction programs to prison populations,
prison guards and new high-level prisons.
Many offenders with mental health issues
and drug addictions were sent off to prison,
and it nearly bankrupted Michigan. County
jails and prisons were filling up with people
who had severe mental health, more than
criminal, issues.
But Manley now sees a paradigm shift to
supporting mental health programs. He
says that many sheriffs will report that their
jails are being populated to a very large
percentage by the mentally ill. In Manley’s
vision, we can move toward a more sensible
judicial system that uses resources not for
political purposes but for what actually
works. “We know that slotting the non-violent
offenders—those who have mental
health, drug or alcohol issues—in prisons
absolutely does not work as a policy.”
Manley says the judicial future is bright, and
increasingly focuses on rehabilitation and
stopping behaviors that perpetuate these
vicious (and often generational) cycles. He
commends the Sobriety Court, the Drug
Court, the Mental Health Court and the
Veterans Court as channels through which
government can hyper-focus on specific
medical and behavior issues, proper
punishment and, most importantly, proper
treatment.
He is confident that the current judicial
system is moving in the right direction,
putting dollars where they belong in
building programs for society’s most
vulnerable. And if indeed that culture of
clarity is changing, it is in large part due to
the earnest work and advocacy of Michael
Manley himself.
I
Michael P. Manley
503 S. Saginaw St., Ste. 1434
Flint, MI 48502
810.238.0500
www.attorneymichaelmanley.com
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