Kym Worthy
| Kym Loren Worthy | |
|---|---|
| Wayne County Prosecutor | |
|
Assumed office 6 January 2004 | |
| Preceded by | Mike Duggan |
| Personal details | |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Alma mater |
University of Michigan (AB) Notre Dame Law School (JD) |
Kym Loren Worthy (born December 5,1956) is the current prosecutor of Wayne County, Michigan, home to Detroit. She is the first African-American woman to serve as a county prosecutor in Michigan. She became internationally recognized for prosecuting then Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick at the beginning of March 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 1974 graduate of T.C. Williams High School.
Worthy started as an assistant prosecutor in the Wayne County Prosecutor's in 1984. She served in this position for ten years, becoming the first African-American special assignment prosecutor under Prosecutor John O'Hair. Her most notable prosecution was the trial of Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers in the beating death of Malice Green. Worthy had an over 90% conviction rate.[1] From 1994 until January 2004 Worthy was a judge on the Wayne County Circuit Court.
In 2004, Worthy was appointed by the judges of the Wayne County Circuit Court bench to replace now Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who resigned to become the head of the Detroit Medical Center.
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.[2] In 2013 Worthy sued Wayne County alleging that Wayne County Executive Robert A. Ficano had provided her with an insufficient budget to fulfill her duties as outlined in the Michigan State Constitution.[3] In June 2014 Worthy backed Warren Evans in his successful race to oust then Wayne Robert A. Ficano in the Democratic Primary.[4]
Presently, Worthy is working on resolving a massive backlog of unprocessed rape test kits in Detroit. In 2009, one of her assistants discovered a massive number of kits sitting in a warehouse that the Detroit Police Department had used as an overflow storage facility for evidence. Eventually, over 11,431 rape test kits—some of which had been sitting unprocessed for a decade or more—were discovered in the warehouse. 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. She is currently featured in the documentary produced by Mariska Hargitay - I AM EVIDENCE.
References
5. https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/i-am-evidence-doc
6. https://injusticetoday.com/kym-worthy-refuses-to-admit-fault-again-118f9a2133b0