Biography of Prosecutor Kym Worthy

Kym Loren Worthy is the current prosecutor of Wayne County, Michigan, that is comprised of 43 jurisdictions. Detroit is the County seat, and the largest city. She is the first African American and the first woman to serve as a county prosecutor in Michigan. In 2004, Worthy was appointed by the judges of the Wayne County Circuit Court bench. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office is by far the busiest in Michigan. There are 83 counties in Michigan, yet Worthy's office handles 52% of all felony cases in Michigan and 64% of all serious felony cases that go to jury trial.

Worthy has the distinction of being the longest serving elected prosecutor of color in the United States. As the elected prosecutor she became internationally recognized for prosecuting former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2008.

Worthy received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her law degree from the University of Notre Dame Law School. She attended high school in Alexandria, Virginia and is a graduate of T.C. Williams High School, which was renamed Alexandria City High School.

Worthy started as an assistant prosecutor in the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office in 1984. She served in this position for 11 years, becoming the first African American special assignment prosecutor under Prosecutor John O'Hair. One of her most notable cases was the prosecution of police officers Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers in the beating death of Malice Green. Worthy had an over 90% conviction rate. In 1994, she was elected to the Detroit Recorder's Court (now the Wayne County Circuit Court). From 1994 until August 2003, she was a judge on the Wayne County Circuit Court.

From the time she took office as the elected prosecutor until the present she has been committed to and responsible for implementing diversion programs that have taken over 25,000 adults and juveniles out of the criminal justice system. Some of the adult programs are Diversion for First Time Offenders, Mental Health Court, Alcohol and Drug Court, and WCPO participates in Wayne County's 24 treatment courts.

Some of the juvenile programs address Truancy, Domestic Violence Offenders, and Teen Court where juvenile offenders are judged by their peers. In 2020 WCPO partnered with the Wayne County Dispute Resolution Center on New Program "Talk It Out."

Every year the Juvenile Division of WCPO handles thousands of juvenile delinquency cases. While many of these matters are set on the formal court docket of the Third Circuit Family Division, there is a new alternate path available on appropriate cases. Prosecutor Worthy, in partnership with the Wayne County Dispute Resolution Center (WCDRC), offers select youth the option to participate in a unique juvenile mediation program called Talk It Out. Although it is imperative that each juvenile who commits a delinquent act is held responsible for his or her conduct, Prosecutor Worthy recognizes the negative impact that juvenile adjudications may have on the future of young people. Those consequences may include suspension or expulsion from school; the loss of college scholarships or the denial of college admission; and the required disclosure of a delinquency record on a job or military application.

The WCPO has created a program that balances the need for delinquent youth to accept responsibility for their actions and the interests of delinquency victims seeking justice. With the assistance of an experienced WCDRC facilitator, Talk It Out brings selected juvenile offenders and their victims together with a focus on repairing the harm resulting from the minor's behavior. The goal of Talk It Out is to provide an alternative to formal prosecution that gives delinquent youth an opportunity to take responsibility and make amends, while also giving the victims a forum to be heard and healed.

In 2009 Worthy began working on resolving a massive backlog of unprocessed rape test kits in Detroit. Despite years of refusal to even allow assistant prosecutors to look for them for over a decade. On August 17, 2009, a massive number of kits were discovered sitting in a warehouse that the Detroit Police Department had used as an overflow storage facility for evidence. The 11,431 sexual assault kits languished in the DPD property warehouse from 1984 to 2009 without being submitted for testing. In one case, a 2002 rape was linked to a man who was incarcerated for three murders he committed in the seven years after the rape.

From the inception of the project, she has been committed to ensuring that every kit is tested, every kit is investigated and that a victim-centered approach to the investigation of sexual assault is implemented.

In 2010 Worthy met actor, producer, and Joyful Heart founder Mariska Hargitay at a Congressional Hearing on Rape Kit Backlogs held by the then Judiciary Chair John Conyers.

Because the City of Detroit was in bankruptcy and the then Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano would not provide funding for the project Worthy turned to the Detroit Crime Commission, Michigan Women's First Foundation and the African American 490 Coalition to form a public-private partnership to raise funds to test the kits. Donations also were given by citizens from all over the United States. The project received grants and funding from the Obama Administration's Office of Violence Against Women, the National Institute for Justice, the State of Michigan, from Wayne County under CEO Warren Evans, Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation, and the New York District Attorney's Office. An important academic study of the project was authored by Michigan State University Professor Rebecca Campbell.

In September 2016 Worthy hosted the first Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Summit that was attended by prosecutors, police, sexual assault victim service workers, academics, and

journalists to share information learned from the Detroit Project.

In 2018 Worthy was featured in the documentary produced by Mariska Hargitay - I AM EVIDENCE. The documentary won several awards including the Emmy in 2019 for the Best Documentary in the News and Documentary category.

In 2018 after a distinguished career with many awards Worthy was inducted into the Michigan Woman's Hall of Fame for her years of tireless work as the Wayne County Prosecutor and specifically for her outstanding work on resolving the Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Backlog. The other inductees were Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Agatha Biddle and Clara Stanton Jones.

During her tenure she has had a robust Special Victim's Unit which includes the Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Project started in 2009. In 2019 the 10th Anniversary of the Detroit Rape Kit Project was marked by a commemorative ceremony celebrating the completion of the testing of all of the rape kits, state legislation that sets out timeline for the submission of kits for testing, and a statewide tracking system that allows victims to follow the progression of their kit for DNA testing.

In 2024 the mission of the Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Project continues with investigations and prosecutions of rapists. As of June 2024, there have been 257 convictions. The cases tested from this project have been linked to 40 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The Detroit Rape Kit Project has been a leader in this field establishing best practices across the country.

In 2016 Prosecutor Worthy and then attorney Dana Nessel, who is now the Attorney General for the State of Michigan created the Fair Michigan Justice Project. The Fair Michigan Justice Project (FMJP) is a program that assists Michigan law enforcement officers and prosecutors in solving serious crimes against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender persons. They have a 100% conviction rate for their cases.

After wanting to have a Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) for many years, Worthy received the funding with the support of Wayne County Executive Warren C. Evans, from the Wayne County Commission in 2017. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office CIU became operational in January 2018 and is headed by Director Valerie Newman. "We are committed to taking these new claims of innocence seriously and we need any and all additional resources we can muster," said Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

The Conviction Integrity Unit investigates claims of actual innocence, to determine whether there is clear and convincing new evidence that the convicted defendant was not the person who committed the conviction offense. The CIU has 14 exoneree's and has granted relief to 25 people to date.

As stated in the American Bar Association standards, Rule 3.8(h), "When a prosecutor knows of clear and convincing evidence establishing that a defendant in the prosecutor's jurisdiction was convicted of an offense that the defendant did not commit,

the prosecutor shall seek to remedy the conviction." CIU makes recommendations to the Wayne County Prosecutor about the appropriate remedy (if any) that should result from its findings. Before a case goes to court the Wayne County Prosecutor makes all final decisions about whether a remedy should be provided to a person seeking review by the CIU.

Since becoming the elected prosecutor in 2004 through the present, Worthy has had a continuous focus on violent crimes, family violence and police misconduct.

She has been an adjunct professor of criminal law at the University of Detroit/Mercy and has lectured at Harvard Law School, the University of Notre Dame Law School, Wayne State University Law School and the Universite des Sciences Sociales in Toulouse, France. She has lectured for the National College of District Attorneys, the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan, the Detroit Police Department and other local schools and agencies.

She is on the Board of Directors for: the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan - Past President, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, United States Figure Skating, the Sickle Cell Diseases Association of America - Michigan Chapter - Board Chair, the Dearborn Figure Skating Club, and the Joyful Heart Foundation - Vice Chair.

Worthy is a member of the National Black Prosecutors Association, Prosecutors Against Gun Violence, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the Michigan Democratic Party, and Greater Grace Temple.

Her hobbies include jigsaw puzzles, word games, film noir movies, and the occasional Boston Cooler. Her proudest accomplishment is being the mother of three daughters, Anastasia, 27, and 15-year-old twins Anniston and Alessandra.