‘Dishonor and shame’: West Michigan judge blasts colleagues over private emails in trial

ALLEGAN, Mich. (WOOD) — An Allegan County judge delivered harsh criticism from the bench Thursday over the behavior of a fellow judge and the county’s prosecutor.

“The actions of Judge (Margaret Zuzich) Bakker and Prosecutor (Myrene) Koch have brought dishonor and shame to the courts of Allegan,” declared Allegan County District Court Judge William Baillargeon. “The damage done to public confidence is hard to measure and the work to rebuild and maintain that confidence will no doubt be daunting. But that is what we swore to undertake when we took the oath to become a judge.”

Baillargeon made the comments at a bond hearing for Daniel Albert Loew, who’s been out on bail pending appeal of his 2019 conviction for criminal sexual conduct.

Baillargeon revoked Loew’s bond and remanded him to the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections after the Michigan Supreme Court rejected Loew’s bid for a new trial.

An Allegan County jury found Loew guilty in August 2019 of sexually assaulting a girl repeatedly, beginning when she was 13 and he was 21.

In three brief emails to Allegan County Prosecutor Koch, Circuit Court Judge Bakker questioned the quality of the investigation by the Michigan State Police.

She sent the email while the trooper was on the stand, according to the prior decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

“This MSP trooper did not do a very good investigation,” the appeals court quoted Bakker as writing in one of her emails to Koch. “Don’t they have detectives with MSP anymore?”

Koch, who was not trying Loew’s case herself, responded the next morning.

“They do but not typically for (criminal sexual conduct) cases,” Koch wrote. “This trooper has been given additional personal training since this investigation.”

Baillargeon granted Loew a new trial based on the ex parte communication, which he said called into question the judge’s impartiality.

In January 2022, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed Baillargeon’s order for a new trial, prompting a higher court appeal by Loew’s attorneys.

On Tuesday, the Michigan Supreme Court issued its opinion, again rejecting a new trial for Loew but holding that the private emails were unethical and, in the trial judge’s case, a violation of the Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct.

“Not only did the trial judge (Bakker) give Prosecutor Koch ‘private access to her ear,'” wrote the Supreme Court in its opinion, “one might reasonably question whether the trial judge was interested in seeing the prosecution succeed or seeing defendant convicted.”

Bakker declined to comment Friday on the Supreme Court’s opinion.

Though the justices deemed the email exchange inappropriate, they determined it did not impact the outcome of Loew’s trial, which is the bar that must be reached to retry the case.

“The trial judge sent only three short emails to Prosecutor Koch asking questions about the investigation in defendant’s case,” read the Supreme Court opinion. “The trial judge did not cooperate with the prosecutor on some matter in an effort to further the prosecution’s interest to defendant’s detriment.”

Loew’s attorneys, SBBL Law of Grand Rapids, vowed to continue their fight for a new trial.

“What we’re saying here is, it’s all but impossible to find this sort of smoking gun,” said defense attorney Heath Lynch in an interview with News 8. “It’s all but impossible to find that hard evidence that there was prejudice, that the trial judge wanted that conviction….What we believe is, ‘Hey, in something as egregious as this, the system should err on the side of granting the citizen a new and hopefully clean and fair trial.'”

Lynch said his firm is researching additional options for appeal.

“This doesn’t just concern some guy in Allegan County and one trial,” explained Lynch. “This concerns us all. This concerns any of us who end up in the justice system, and who have — on the opposite side of the aisle — a prosecuting attorney and a judge who we’d like to think looks at that prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney the same way, treats them the same way, doesn’t have side conversation with either one of us. But now we have a case where it’s very clear, that’s not always the case.”

Bakker was a prosecutor in Allegan County prior to taking the bench.

Prosecutor Koch emphasized that her focus is on achieving justice for Loew’s victim.

“What I’m most disheartened about is that the victim in this case has had to go through this entire appellate process,” said Koch in an interview Friday with News 8. “The appeals court and Supreme Court affirmed these convictions. But at the end of the day, the focus should be on this victim and what happened to her.”

Koch said she did want to set the record straight regarding the emails.

“The communications were sent to me by the trial judge, talking about deficiencies in the investigation,” said Koch. “My responses were specifically and solely about policies and procedures moving forward. Nothing about the witnesses, the evidence, the trial itself, nothing about what the court should do or not do. And, quite honestly, those communications were never shared with the assistant prosecutor attorney who was trying the case.”

In its opinion, the Supreme Court noted the assistant prosecutor on the case addressed problems with the investigation before the ex parte emails occurred.

“There was no evidence that Prosecutor Koch told the trial prosecutor about the trial judge’s comments,” wrote the justices. “And even if Prosecutor Koch’s knowledge were imputed to the trial prosecutor, there was nothing to suggest that the trial prosecutor tried a different tack in response to the trial judge’s comments. The trial prosecutor disclosed the trooper’s investigative missteps in her opening statement….”

Koch, who’s running for reelection, said she has learned from the Loew case.

“Even though my intent was pure to talk (in the emails) only about procedural aspects, I have learned not even to do that, and I’ve shared that with my staff and others around the state to make sure they don’t find themselves in similar circumstances. But at the end of the day, the focus should be on the victim and what happened to her and that this person, indeed, has been convicted by a jury of multiple counts of criminal sexual conduct.”

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