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Attorney General Dana Nessel fights for new bills that would protect victims of violent crimes
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says that current law is putting crime victims and witnesses in danger during the legal process.
FOX 2 (WJBK) - Attorney General Dana Nessel says that current law is putting crime victims and witnesses in danger during the legal process.
"No one should have to fear for their life just by reporting a crime," she said. "The personal information of a witness or a victim of a crime has to be turned over, to not just the defense attorney, but to the defendant who is alleged to have committed those crimes.
"That is terrifying."
Not just terrifying - it can be deadly, as happened in the 2018 murder of 33-year-old Starkisha Thompson. The young woman was gunned at a home on Detroit's east side. Her father was convinced she was targeted.
It was retaliation of her being carjacked and testifying against the suspects, her father told FOX 2 at the time. And Nessel says - her father was right.
"Who was Starkisha Thompson? She was a carjacking victim in the City of Detroit," Nessel said. "Her information was not redacted - it went directly to the defendant who was in the Wayne County Jail.
"He got her home address and he sent some men out to murder her, and that's exactly what they did."
Now serving life in prison - Kenneth Dixon, the stranger who carjacked Starkisha, then got her personal information while in jail. He sent his friend Corey Holmes to kill her.
Starkisha Thompson
Holmes is serving a life sentence as well as Dixon's girlfriend, Jahlana Streeter, who helped plot the murder.
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"What I'm seeing more and more now, is for victims and for witnesses saying 'I don't want to go forward and report this crime' no matter how heinous it is - to the police because 'I'm so afraid of whoever the perpetrator is, getting my personal information.'"
Nessel says it is making it more difficult to prosecute violent crimes - like carjacking, sexual assault, and armed robbery.
"Why would we make crime victims have to endure that in Michigan - why would we re-traumatize them and re-victimize them in that way?" Nessel said. "It just doesn't make any sense."
Which is why the attorney general is pushing for the passage of the Starkisha Thompson bills - to ensure that personal information for victims and witnesses is blacked out - unless otherwise ordered by the court.
The bills have already been passed by the State House.
"We're urging the State Senate please, at long last, do the right thing and pass these laws," she said.