LANSING, Mich. — A red and white banker’s box held together with clear tape and bearing torn mailing labels was slipped last month into a closet at the Michigan Hall of Justice.

Its contents — one of the most significant, failed cases in state history — are barred by law from ever being made public. The cardboard box collecting dust in Lansing contains documents, notes and transcripts of testimony used to charge nine individuals, including Republican former Gov. Rick Snyder and some top aides, with crimes related to the Flint water crisis.

The charges were thrown out a little more than a year after they were issued when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled the state’s one-judge grand jury law had been misapplied to the high-profile case.

But grand jury law still applies to the management of the documentation generated during the process and that law requires the documents remain suppressed indefinitely. It also bars officials from discussing exhibits or testimony presented during those proceedings.

Like many aspects of the Flint water crisis — now 10 years old — information about what went wrong is slow to trickle out and vows of transparency have led to frustrating dead ends.

The documents could provide some closure to Flint residents who never got their day in court, Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley said.

"I am anxious as the next person to see and review these documents, to see what is in them or not in them," Neeley said. "We need to be able to evaluate these things in an open environment.”

Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Flint prosecution team vowed at the closure of the Flint criminal prosecution last year that it would work with lawmakers to change the law keeping the grand jury records sealed. But it's not clear that any such discussions have taken place.

Nessel's office on Wednesday would not say whether it had spoken with any lawmakers regarding a statutory change that could result in a release of information or to confirm it was still working toward that end. Several lawmakers in a position to introduce the legislation — including Democratic Flint lawmakers Sen. John Cherry and Rep. Cynthia Neeley — said they had not been approached by the attorney general's office.

In other instances, the attorney general’s office redacted key information from documents that spoke to the status of the case when she took over in 2019, and other requests for communication related to the unsuccessful prosecution her office mounted in 2021 have carried large price tags.

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