Michigan Criminal Court Records

Identify the court and the stage of the criminal case

Start with the court shown on the citation, complaint, hearing notice or judgment. Michigan’s trial-court directory helps locate that office. District courts generally handle misdemeanor trials punishable by no more than one year and conduct preliminary proceedings in felony cases. Felony sentencing belongs in circuit court. A district-court reference may therefore lead to a separate circuit-court file rather than the final outcome you need.

Write down both references when a matter was bound over. Do not treat a preliminary examination as a conviction, or assume that a case disappeared simply because its earlier stage is no longer visible. The relevant document is the order addressing the particular charge and stage, with later amendments or appellate action checked when they matter to your purpose.

Search MiCOURT with the correct court selected

MiCOURT is an official public case-search starting point, but its terms say the displayed information does not replace the court’s official record. Select the intended court and use the available case-number or party-search controls. Keep the court name, case number, charge, event dates and search date with any result. The linked terms below appear on the 36th District Court entry; choose your own court rather than assuming Detroit is the correct jurisdiction.

For a name result, compare lawful identifying details and the known circumstances before deciding it concerns the intended person. Do not join two same-name cases into one history. If the search presents too little information to distinguish people, the correct conclusion is that the match remains unresolved, not that the first result must be right.

Read the seven-year filter without confusing it with sealing

Some participating courts restrict displayed criminal-conviction information to sentencing within seven years of the search. MiCOURT marks these courts in its “7-Year Criminal Sentence Filter” column and directs users to contact the court for older files. This is a display rule; it does not itself establish that an older conviction was erased.

There is also a separate access rule for the earlier court stage. Michigan Judicial Institute guidance states that district- or municipal-court case and court records become nonpublic immediately after an order binding the defendant over to circuit court entered on or after July 2, 2024. Ask about the circuit-court reference instead of interpreting an unavailable district entry as the absence of a prosecution. Other nonpublic or sealed information is likewise not opened by a public search.

Check the warning on attempted-offense classifications

MiCOURT currently warns of a temporary charge-level display problem for attempts under MCL 750.92: the search may label an attempted felony as FELONY even when the applicable attempt is a misdemeanor. The notice points to the letter “A” in the attempted/conspired/solicited field. For such a result, ask the trial court to confirm the classification and read the actual disposition before describing the person’s conviction.

Obtain the judgment or a certified copy from its custodian

Contact the clerk of the court holding the case. Give the case number, defendant’s name, requested document and approximate date, and specify whether a certified copy is needed. An online printout, a docket entry and a certified court copy are different products. A hearing transcript may also require a different request from a copy of a filed judgment.

Michigan court guidance allows reproduction fees under the applicable statute or rule, with exceptions for copies required without charge. There is no verified single copy price or delivery time covering every court in this guide. Ask your court for its per-page charge, certification fee, payment method, electronic or postal delivery options and estimate before sending money. Redacted or restricted material may require a different access decision; certification does not remove those restrictions.

Keep ICHAT and custody information separate

If the task is a public Michigan criminal-history check, MSP offers ICHAT rather than a certified court file. MSP lists $10 per name-based search. Its repository excludes federal, tribal, juvenile, traffic, out-of-state and local-misdemeanor records, along with suppressed records and warrant information. A no-hit therefore cannot prove that every court or jurisdiction has no record.

For your own public and nonpublic record associated with fingerprints, MSP lists a separate personal-record check with a $30 processing fee. Follow that product’s current submission instructions. OTIS is different again: it concerns corrections supervision, including certain people discharged within the preceding three years, rather than all court prosecutions.

Correct the source of an inaccurate entry

MSP directs arrest errors to the reporting law-enforcement agency, charge errors to the reporting prosecutor, and judicial errors to the court identified in the history. Obtain the supporting disposition and explain the exact field that conflicts. MSP must verify changes with the reporting agency when information comes from elsewhere; its help contact is 517-241-0606 or [email protected].

Keep the corrected court order or agency response and check the downstream report separately. A change in one repository does not demonstrate that every commercial copy has been updated. If an older MiCOURT case is missing, resolve the court, filter and access status first instead of filing a correction request based solely on the missing search result.