A report from the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office says 77 criminal cases were dismissed because evidence was missing from the Ingham County Sheriff's Office. The cases were opened between January 1 of 2010 and December 31 of 2016. 56 of them were misdemeanors, 21 were felonies. Most of them involved controlled substances. Two of them were open and active at the time they were dismissed. The problem was discovered when a new quartermaster took over the evidence room in 2013.
The report does not say why then-Sheriff Gene Wriggelsworth waited until September of 2016 to go public. Current Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth will discuss the evidence room problems on Friday. The Ingham County Law and Courts Committee will discuss the prosecutor's report on Thursday night. A Michigan State Police investigation is ongoing.
The prosecutor's report lists 18 specific problems with evidence-room procedures at the Sheriff's Office including failure to adequately tag evidence, partial destruction of evidence on open cases and failure to remedy evidence procedures when informed of the problem.
The report says Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon and Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth have discussed the problem and that the Sheriff has started a program to audit evidence from the time it's taken in until it's destroyed. It goes on to say the Prosecutor's Office is confident the issues are being fixed and the problems will not be repeated.
