Last week, you may have read or heard about a man who attended a virtual court hearing for driving with a suspended license. What made a normally mundane hearing perplexing was that he attended the hearing while he was driving. After reading the charges, Judge J. Cedric Simpson was silent for nearly a minute before ordering the defendant Corey Harris to turn himself in to the local jail by the end of the day.
The hearing was caught on national news, and Harris was subject to ridicule on social media.
But a quick search of the Saginaw County court records shows that while Harris’s license is suspended, there is more to his story.
Harris’s driver’s license was suspended back in 2010. But in 2022, the court rescinded the order.
Unfortunately, a court order alone does not automatically reinstate someone’s driver’s license in Michigan. First, the licensee must pay a $45 clearance fee to the court and then take the court’s rescission order and proof of payment to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. There, after paying an additional $125 license reinstatement fee, the licensee can get his driver’s license reinstated.
The state also has a “Road to Restoration” program which is a free clinic that provides advice to Michigan residents to help them get their driving privileges restored. These clinics are held in select Michigan cities a few days every month. How people needing these services will get to these clinics will be an interesting discussion as these clinics are not given virtually.
In Harris’s case, there seems to be two different explanations for the mishap. One claims that his license was not reinstated due to a clerical error. While another states that Harris may not have paid the requisite fees to get his license reinstated.
Because of this, he was cited for driving with a suspended license in October 2023 which led to the infamous hearing.
As for the hearing itself, neither Harris nor his attorney mentioned the 2022 rescission. In hindsight, you would think that at the very least Harris should have mentioned it to the judge in the hopes of getting leniency. But we don’t know what led to this hearing, and it is possible that Harris could have dug himself a deeper hole by talking. And no one knows for certain whether Simpson would have accepted this explanation. Harris now has a new attorney representing him.
When this story was covered by the mainstream media, everyone assumed it was true. After all, it is hard to ignore Harris driving his car while virtually attending a suspended license hearing. Also, the public defender seems to acknowledge that Harris was driving with a suspended license. Many news sites are releasing corrections or updates to their stories to reflect the rescission in 2022. But it will take a while before Harris’s internet profile reflects these updates.
Harris’s next hearing will be on June 5.
Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at stevenchungatl@gmail.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.
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