Plaintiff Mark T. Craighead brought this action in connection to a 2002 wrongful conviction of manslaughter and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony for the 1997 homicide of his friend Chole Pruett.
Craighead was exonerated twenty-one years later, then he filed this federal civil rights action for malicious prosecution and violations of his constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments against Defendants City of Detroit, Investigators Barbara Simon and James Fisher, Lieutenant Bob Jackson, and Polygraph Operator Andrew Sims.
The parties offered the opinions of their respective experts on issues concerning general police practices; investigative decisions and techniques; polygraph examinations and false confessions.
The parties filed cross-motions to exclude each other’s experts concerning investigation of the underlying crime, including the decision to pursue Craighead as a suspect, the conditions of his detention and/or arrest, the administration of a polygraph examination, and the circumstances surrounding his false confession.
Law Enforcement Expert Witness
Todd L. Mutchler has 38 years of law enforcement experience. He has vast knowledge and deep understanding of law enforcement operations; two years working in dispatch and 36 years as a sworn law enforcement officer with four different police departments.
Polygraph Expert Witnesses
Bradford J. Beyer, Ph.D. is a retired Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) where he was employed for 27 years. He was certified by the FBI as a Polygraph Examiner for 18 years and as a Crisis Negotiator for 8 years.
James B. McCloughan is experienced examiner with a demonstrated history of working in the law enforcement industry and over 25 years of experience in polygraph.
Sleep Medicine Expert Witness
Michel A. Cramer Bornemann was the former co-Director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was an Assistant Professor holding joint appointments in the Departments of Neurology and Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He was also a faculty instructor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota Graduate School, Twin Cities.
Bornemann has several ongoing research projects in the field of Sleep Disorders and has received funding from a wide variety of sources, including the National Institutes of Health, the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota, as well as from medical technology and pharmaceutical industries.
Psychology Expert Witness
Dr. Melissa Beth Russano is a professor of criminal justice and a research psychologist whose principal areas of research are investigative interviewing, interrogations, and confessions in law enforcement, military, and human intelligence settings.
She has conducted research in those areas since 2002, published numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters, developed a widely used laboratory paradigm for studying true and false confessions, trained local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, and received federal funding from the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Defense for interrogation research.
Discussion by the Court
Todd Mutchler
Plaintiff retained Todd Mutchler to “provide his professional opinions regarding the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Craighead” by “assessing whether there were deviations from generally accepted police practices in [DPD Investigators’] the investigation” into the June 27, 1997, shooting that resulted in the death of Chole Pruett.”
Defendants sought to strike Mutchler’s opinions and exclude his testimony at trial because (1) he is unqualified and his opinions are unreliable; (2) he utilizes an incorrect standard to form his opinion; (3) he has not disclosed the standards and authorities upon which he relies; and (4) portions of his opinion are irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial.
Analysis
First, despite over 38 years of police experience, Mutchler is apparently unqualified to serve as Plaintiff’s police practices expert. Defendants seemed to misunderstand the function of Mutchler’s testimony, which is to “educate the jury as to standard police procedures in conducting investigations.”
Under the same false premise, Defendants maintained that Mutchler failed to apply “specialized knowledge” to the fact of this case.
Here, the Court is satisfied that Plaintiff has shown that Mutchler is qualified to address not just one, but several issues in this case within the scope of the expertise for which Plaintiff has offered him.
Second, Defendants asserted that Mutchler applied a negligence, rather than intentional, affirmative conduct standard to Defendants’ conduct. Considering Plaintiff has already clarified the scope of his expert’s testimony, the Court is satisfied that Mutchler’s opinions will not exceed this scope.
Third, Mutchler allegedly failed to satisfy the requirements outlined in Rule 26 because he did not disclose the standards and authorities upon which he relied.
Plaintiff contended that the basis for Mutchler’s opinion is clear, and the Court agreed. In fact, looking to Mutchler’s expert report itself, he expressly stated that his “approach involves assessing the actions of law enforcement officers against widely accepted police practices, policies, and legal standards.”
Finally, Defendants asserted that Mutchler provided opinions on the conduct of Non-Defendant officers, which is irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial. At this stage of the litigation, before the parties have fully briefed the motions in limine and the Court has ruled on those motions, the Court found Plaintiff’s concerns premature.
The Court, however, granted Defendants’ request to strike any of Mutchler’s opinions regarding application of a negligence standard to the Complaint.
Bradford Beyer
Defendants retained Dr. Bradford Beyer to author two reports in this case. At a high level, he was to conduct a review “in light of the polygraph technique, law enforcement interview and interrogation methods, and the phenomenon of false confessions.”
The Court found that given Beyer has “considerable experience in the field of criminology and because he will be testifying concerning a discrete area of police practices about which he has specialized knowledge,” his testimony is admissible.
By the same token, the Court is also satisfied that Beyer’s background is sufficient to qualify him as an expert on investigative techniques and decisions, false confessions, and the associated risk factors.
As for Plaintiff’s argument that Beyer offered opinions bearing on Plaintiff’s credibility, the Court agreed with Plaintiff and found such opinions improper.
The Court’s preclusion also extends to any of Beyer’s opinions on ultimate issues in this case to the extent that those opinions include determinations of Defendants’ liability in this case, or lack thereof.
Finally, Plaintiff argued that Beyer employed an improper methodology and he offered opinions that lacked foundation. The Court found otherwise. Plaintiff is correct that “police practices experts may opine on proper police procedure, but they must employ an appropriate methodology.”
However, the Court did not find that Beyer relied upon improper methodology. As an example, Plaintiff pointed to Beyer’s opinion that “Investigator Fisher and Lt. Jackson’s investigative decision to start with Craighead bore obvious fruit as he went on to confess to the murder of Pruett and was then subsequently charged and convicted for his crime.” At most, the Court found that this implicates potential impermissible credibility determinations, which the Court has already precluded.
Michel Bornemann
Bornemann is a medical doctor who specializes in sleep medicine. Defendants retained him “to review case files in an attempt to provide an unbiased objective expert medical opinion as to whether sleep deprivation (and subsequent cognitive impairment) was a primary influence accounting for Mark Craighead’s false confession and subsequent wrongful conviction in 2002 pertaining to the 1997 murder of his friend, Chole Pruett.”
Analysis
According to Plaintiff, Bornemann relied on an incorrect sleep timeline in assessing whether Plaintiff experienced sleep deprivation that contributed to his false confession, therefore, the Court should bar his opinions.
Bornemann considered Plaintiff’s Complaint and his witness statements; transcripts of the 2001 Walker hearing, jury trial, and evidentiary hearing, and October 1, 2025 hearing; and 2013 photographs of DPD’s 9th floor cells in preparing his report.
As a result, the Court will not bar Bornemann’s opinions on this ground.
Next, Plaintiff accused Bornemann of “making factual determinations regarding whether the Defendants engaged in conduct that prevented Craighead from sleeping while in custody.”
Upon an independent review of the report in its entirety, the Court found that Bornemann’s opinions improperly entered the territory of questions reserved for the jury.
To that end, Bornemann was precluded from offering any testimony regarding whether (1) Defendants were responsible for Craighead’s sleep deprivation or (2) there is “compelling evidence to support that insufficient sleep was a significant influence that eventually lead to Mark Craighead’s false confession.”
James McCloughan
Plaintiff retained McCloughan as a polygraph expert “to offer opinions on the propriety of polygraphing a subject who was as sleep-deprived as Plaintiff, and the impacts that Plaintiff’s sleep deprivation could have on his polygraph results.”
A review of McCloughan’s expert report reveals that the entirety of his opinions concerns Sims’ alleged acts and overall conduct. The Court has determined that Sims was entitled to qualified immunity which means he is no longer a Defendant in this action.
Accordingly, McCloughan’s opinions and any related testimony are not directed at any of the remaining issues in the case.
Melissa Russano
Craighead retained Russano as a false confessions expert to opine on the psychology behind interrogations, confessions, and the risk factors associated with false confessions.
Russano’s expert report generally offers three categories of opinions. First, she explains the phenomenon of false confessions and the relevant social science research. First, she explained the phenomenon of false confessions and the relevant social science research. Second, she identified known risk factors for false confessions and discusses their potential application here. These risk factors include: “(a) prolonged custody, isolation, and interrogation; (b) physical abuse/threats of physical harm/physical discomfort/deprivation of basic necessities; (c) sleep deprivation; (d) multiple interrogators; (e) guilt-presumptive approach; (f) presentation of false/unreliable evidence; and (g) threats and promises.” Lastly, Russano explained a framework for assessing the reliability of confession evidence by considering dependent and independent corroboration.
Analysis
A. Qualifications
Defendants argued that Russano is not qualified to offer case-specific opinions because she is a research psychologist rather than a clinician, has not personally evaluated Plaintiff, has not conducted a custodial interrogation, and is not a sleep-medicine specialist.
The Court disagrees. The relevant inquiry is not whether an expert possesses every form of experience that might bear on a subject, but whether her “qualifications provide a foundation for [her] to answer a specific question.”
Russano’s education, research, publications, laboratory work, law-enforcement training, and more than two decades of specialized study directly concerning the psychology of interrogations and confessions. That foundation qualifies her to explain false-confession research, recognized interrogation-related risk factors, and the significance of those factors within her discipline.
Defendants’ objections also misstate the nature of the proposed opinions. Russano does not purport to diagnose Plaintiff, assess his clinical condition, or offer a medical diagnosis concerning sleep deprivation. She proposes to explain how conditions such as fatigue and sleep deprivation are treated in the false-confession literature and how those conditions may affect a person undergoing interrogation. Nor was she required to personally interview Plaintiff or conduct the interrogation herself.
B. Reliability
Defendants contended that Russano’s opinions are unreliable because the prevalence of false confessions is unknown, her assessment of Plaintiff’s confession has not been empirically validated and has no known error rate, and no fixed standard governs how the identified risk factors are weighed.
Plaintiff has demonstrated that Russano’s opinions draw from peerreviewed case studies, observational and laboratory research, meta-analyses, and accepted principles of cognitive and social psychology concerning conditions associated with an increased risk of false confession.
Her corroboration analysis likewise distinguishes details independently verified or unknown to investigators from details that may have originated with investigators. These methods are transparent, grounded in the literature identified in her report, and capable of being tested against the record through cross-examination and contrary evidence.
In sum, Russano applies recognized research to the disputed circumstances of an actual confession without claiming that the identified factors themselves establish its falsity. Plaintiff has therefore shown that Russano’s testimony rests on sufficiently reliable principles and methods.
C. Helpfulness and Speculation
Defendants separately argued that Russano’s opinions are too speculative to assist the jury.
Russano did not intend to testify that the alleged interrogation conditions caused Plaintiff to confess falsely or that the confession was in fact false. Rather, her testimony will explain the phenomenon of false confessions, identify conditions that research associates with an increased risk of false confession, and explain which factors would be implicated under the facts found by the jury.
Moreover, the conditional nature of Russano’s application did not make it speculative. An expert may rely on assumed facts that have support in the record; and disputes or weaknesses in those assumptions ordinarily affect weight, not admissibility.
Here, Plaintiff’s account of prolonged isolation, food and sleep deprivation, a late-night polygraph, threats concerning his job and family, and a promise of release implicates the risk factors identified in Russano’s report. Her testimony therefore fits the disputed evidence and may assist the jury, while Defendants remain free to challenge its factual premises through cross-examination and contrary evidence.
D. The Role of the Jury
Defendants also contended that Russano intends to tell the jury which evidence to credit and how to weigh Plaintiff’s confession.
Russano’s conditional application of the research to each account does not tell the jury which version to believe. It leaves the predicate factual and credibility determinations where they belong, with the jury, and supplies specialized knowledge concerning the significance of the facts the jury may find.
That said, the Court clarified the permissible scope of Russano’s testimony at trial. She may explain the phenomenon of false confessions, recognized risk factors, the psychological mechanisms associated with those factors, the factors potentially implicated under the parties’ competing factual accounts, and the concepts of dependent and independent corroboration. But she may not offer a conclusive opinion that Plaintiff’s confession was false or unreliable, state that the jury should not rely on the confession, or otherwise tell the jury what conclusion to reach on that ultimate factual question. This limitation does not warrant excluding her testimony altogether.
E. Rule 26 Disclosures
Defendants finally argued that Russano’s disclosures are deficient because she did not retain notes from her review of the record and because her report did not include opinions concerning the report of Defendants’ sleep expert, Michel Bornemann.
Bornemann’s report did not exist when Russano prepared her report. After reviewing it, she made notes that were produced to Defendants in response to their subpoena before her deposition. Defense counsel then questioned her about those notes and elicited her opinions concerning Bornemann’s report.
Accordingly, Russano’s produced notes and deposition testimony made the opinions known to Defendants during discovery and in writing. Questions asked during an expert deposition may also bear on the permissible scope of the expert’s trial testimony.
Even assuming a technical supplementation requirement remained, the timing of Bornemann’s report substantially justified the absence of the opinions from Russano’s initial report, and Defendants’ receipt of the notes and examination of Russano rendered any omission harmless under Rule 37(c)(1). The Court will not exclude Russano’s testimony on this basis.
Nor did Russano’s failure to retain separate notes from every portion of her review, standing alone, establish that her report omitted the facts, data, bases, or reasons supporting her disclosed opinions.
Held
- The Court granted in part and denied in part Defendants’ motion to strike expert Todd Mutchler.
- The Court granted in part and denied in part Plaintiff’s motion to bar the testimony of Defendants’ expert Dr. Bradford Beyer.
- The Court granted in part and denied in part Plaintiff’s motion to bar opinions of Defendants’ retained expert Dr. Michel Bornemann.
- The Court denied as moot Defendant’s motion to strike the testimony of James McCloughan.
- The Court denied the Defendants’ motion to strike the testimony of expert Melissa Russano.
Key Takeaway
It is not an expert’s role to apply the law to the facts—that task is reserved for a jury. Rather, an expert’s testimony is relevant when it “will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.”
An expert’s qualifications—let alone that of an expert with nearly four decades of experience—is not “in the abstract, but whether those qualifications provide a foundation for a witness to answer a specific question.”
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Craighead V. Simon |
| Docket Number: | 2:23cv12243 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Michigan Eastern |
| Order Date: | July 19, 2026 |
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