Judge Dismisses All Flint Criminal Charges on Technicality—Zero Accountability After Poisoning Thousands

Judges dismiss all remaining criminal charges against officials responsible for the Flint water crisis based on a procedural technicality, ensuring that no one is ever held criminally accountable for poisoning thousands of children. In October 2022, Judge Elizabeth Kelly throws out felony charges against seven people, including former state health officials blamed for Legionnaires’ deaths. In December 2022, Judge F. Kay Behm dismisses charges against former Governor Rick Snyder. The dismissals are based on a June 2022 Michigan Supreme Court ruling that “a judge acting as a one-person grand jury had no authority to issue indictments.”

The Supreme Court ruling overturns decades of legal precedent upholding Michigan’s one-person grand jury system, finding that state law does not authorize a judge to issue indictments without a preliminary examination. Because prosecutors used this method to indict officials in 2021, all charges are now invalid regardless of the underlying evidence of wrongdoing.

Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley states: “The powerful men and women in this state, who poisoned the water in our faucets, found a very unfair victory today based on a technicality.” The dismissals represent complete systemic failure: eight years after officials made the decision to poison Flint’s water supply, and after two separate prosecutorial efforts (2016-2019 and 2019-2022), zero criminal accountability.

The outcome epitomizes two-tiered justice: when powerful officials commit crimes that harm predominantly Black, poor communities, the legal system finds procedural off-ramps. The message is clear—you can strip away democratic governance, prioritize cost savings over public health, poison 6,000-14,000 children causing permanent neurological damage, kill 12 people in Legionnaires’ outbreaks, conceal evidence, attack whistleblowers, and delay emergency response for 18 months, all while governing a majority-Black city that you’ve rendered powerless through emergency manager law—and face zero criminal consequences.

The dismissals ensure that the Flint water crisis remains an atrocity without accountability, an environmental racism case study in which the justice system protects the powerful who harmed the vulnerable. All criminal prosecutions end without a single felony conviction, sending a message that such crimes are essentially legal when committed against expendable populations.