Court kills Flint water charges against ex-governor, others - The Associated Press

It’s an astonishing defeat for Attorney General Dana Nessel, who took office in 2019, got rid of a special prosecutor and put together a new team to investigate whether crimes were committed when lead contaminated Flint’s water system in 2014-15.

They couldn’t do what they tried to do,” said Lyon attorney Chip Chamberlain.

“These prosecutions of Governor Snyder and the other defendants were never about seeking justice for the citizens of Flint,” Snyder’s lawyers said.

“The Flint water crisis stands as one of this country’s greatest betrayals of citizens by their government,” she said.

The saga began in 2014 when Flint managers appointed by Snyder dropped out of a regional water system and began using the Flint River to save money while a new pipeline to Lake Huron was under construction.

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission said it was the result of systemic racism, doubting that the water switch and the brush-off of complaints would have occurred in a white, prosperous community.

“It seems that the power of a judge conducting an inquiry to issue an indictment was simply an unchallenged assumption, until now,” the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

His lawyers, however, said he had ordered experts to investigate the illnesses and notify Flint-area health officials.

He had no role in Flint’s water switch.

“State employees should not be prosecuted or demonized for just doing their job,” Lyon said after the court’s decision.

The water switch and its consequences have been investigated since 2016 when then-Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, appointed Todd Flood as special prosecutor.