The Eastern District of Michigan is one of the country’s marquee federal trial courts: 6.5 million people from the Ohio line to the Mackinac Bridge, an international border with Canada running through the middle of its biggest city, a U.S. Attorney’s Office of roughly 135 prosecutors, and a public-corruption and health-care-fraud tradition that has produced some of the most consequential white-collar prosecutions in modern memory. When a federal investigation or charge lands here, it lands in a court that has seen everything — and expects counsel who have too.
This guide covers the court and its five courthouses, the bench, the prosecutors and their signature dockets, and the appeal and post-conviction routes out of an EDMI judgment. Our firm, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., practices federal criminal defense nationwide — and Elizabeth Franklin-Best holds standing bar admission in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, so we appear here directly, no pro hac vice motion required. In a district built on white-collar prosecutions, her recognition by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations and her selection in Best Lawyers in America 2026 as a “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice speak to exactly the work EDMI cases demand. This page is part of our federal courts directory.
A target letter from the Detroit U.S. Attorney’s Office, a health-care-fraud audit turning criminal, an indictment already on the docket — whatever stage an Eastern District of Michigan matter has reached, our paid, one-hour initial consultation is built to assess it honestly and chart what comes next.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Eastern District of Michigan
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the Eastern District of Michigan cover? | Thirty-four counties of eastern Michigan — 6.5 million people from the Ohio border to the Mackinac Bridge — with courthouses in Detroit (the historic Theodore Levin building), Ann Arbor, Flint, Bay City, and Port Huron. |
| Who prosecutes federal cases there? | The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan — roughly 135 federal prosecutors led, as of mid-2026, by Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr., with offices in Detroit, Flint, and Bay City. |
| Which circuit hears appeals? | The Sixth Circuit — and notably, the EDMI prosecutors maintain a standalone Appellate Division, so the defense should arrive at the court of appeals at least as prepared as the government does. |
| Where are post-conviction motions filed? | Section 2255 motions return to the EDMI sentencing court. The district also hears Section 2241 petitions from FCI Milan — the low-security institution and federal detention center about forty miles southwest of Detroit that held roughly 1,500 prisoners as of June 2026. |
| Is the firm admitted in the Eastern District of Michigan? | Yes — by standing bar admission, not case-by-case motion. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to practice before this court directly, one of seven federal district courts where she holds full admission. |
Key Takeaways
- The district covers 34 counties and 6.5 million people in eastern Michigan, with staffed courthouses in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, Bay City, and Port Huron — all five confirmed on the court’s own site as of mid-2026.
- 28 U.S.C. § 133 gives the district fifteen judgeships — among the largest federal benches in the Sixth Circuit — led as of mid-2026 by Chief Judge Stephen J. Murphy, III, with six magistrate judges under Chief Magistrate Judge David R. Grand.
- Sentencing Commission data show 642 people sentenced in fiscal year 2024: firearms cases at 24.6% (nearly double the national share) and fraud, theft, and embezzlement at 14.0%, far above the 8.6% national figure.
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office — about 135 prosecutors under Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. as of mid-2026 — runs one of the nation’s defining health-care-fraud and public-corruption dockets, with its own appellate division.
- The Detroit-Windsor border crossings put smuggling, export, and cross-border financial cases on this docket that most inland districts never see.
- After Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), 18 U.S.C. § 666 reaches bribes to state and local officials but not after-the-fact gratuities — a line that matters in a district with EDMI’s corruption-enforcement history.
- Rule 4(b)’s fourteen-day appeal window is unforgiving, and in a court whose judgments are reviewed by Cincinnati under exacting preservation rules, we lock appellate issues into the record at sentencing rather than hoping plain error saves them later.
- FCI Milan — a low-security institution doubling as the district’s federal detention center — held roughly 1,500 people as of June 2026; its § 2241 and compassionate-release litigation comes to this court.
- Elizabeth Franklin-Best holds standing admission to this district court — one of seven where she is fully admitted — so our appearances here require no pro hac vice step.
The Eastern District of Michigan at a Glance
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan covers 34 counties in the eastern Lower Peninsula — metropolitan Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, the Thumb, and north to the Mackinac Bridge. Its flagship is Detroit’s Theodore Levin United States Courthouse, a 1934 Art Deco landmark whose seven original courtrooms remain in use, including the famed “Million Dollar Courtroom” rebuilt from the 1890 federal building; staffed courthouses also operate in Ann Arbor, Flint, Bay City, and Port Huron, exactly as the court’s own locations page lists them as of mid-2026.
Prosecutions come from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, one of the larger USAOs in the country. Convictions are reviewed by the Sixth Circuit — and because Detroit generates a steady stream of significant white-collar and corruption appeals, EDMI cases have repeatedly been the vehicles through which that circuit’s (and the Supreme Court’s) fraud doctrine gets made.
Procedure here runs on the Federal Rules plus the court’s Local Rules, plans, and administrative orders — a body of local law the court actively maintains: a notice of proposed local-rule amendments went out on June 1, 2026, with comments due July 13, 2026. Judge-specific practice guidelines layered on top do much of the day-to-day governing, which is why we read a newly assigned EDMI judge’s standing orders before we file anything at all.
A Metropolitan Bench: Fifteen Judgeships and Six Magistrates
By statute, 28 U.S.C. § 133 allots the Eastern District of Michigan fifteen district judgeships — the largest allotment in the Sixth Circuit. As of mid-2026, Chief Judge Stephen J. Murphy, III leads the court, and with senior judges continuing to carry substantial caseloads, the court’s own roster lists more than twenty district judges in all. Six magistrate judges, headed by Chief Magistrate Judge David R. Grand, run the criminal-duty calendar — initial appearances, detention hearings, search-warrant review — that determines whether a client sleeps at home or at the Milan detention center while the case is litigated.
A bench this size has practical consequences for defense strategy. Random assignment across that many chambers means broad variation in scheduling practices, motion procedures, and sentencing approaches — all of it published in each judge’s practice guidelines, none of it a secret to lawyers who do the reading. What we will not do is trade on judge reputations: every judge on this court gets the same thing from us, which is complete preparation.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
Fiscal year 2024 saw 642 people sentenced in this district — a volume that places EDMI among the busiest criminal courts in the circuit. The mix is distinctive: firearms cases ran 24.6% of sentencings (the national share is 13.2%), while fraud, theft, and embezzlement reached 14.0% against 8.6% nationally — the signature of a district with a serious white-collar docket. Drug cases tracked the national average at 29.8%, and 96.1% of convictions came by plea, with 25 trials. The procedural arc is the standard federal one.
Most cases begin with an investigation by a federal agency, sometimes signaled by a target letter or a grand jury subpoena. Formal charges follow, typically by indictment. After an initial appearance and arraignment, the case proceeds through pretrial litigation and discovery, and is then resolved either by a negotiated plea agreement or by trial. A conviction is followed by sentencing under the federal framework. Stage-by-stage detail lives in our federal criminal process hub.
In EDMI’s white-collar cases especially, the sequence often starts long before any charge — with parallel civil and criminal investigations, data-heavy grand jury subpoenas, and charging decisions that can be shaped by counsel who engage early. Our work in this district leans into that window: presentations to prosecutors before indictment, fights over the scope of fraud and corruption theories after the Supreme Court’s recent narrowing decisions, and loss-amount and restitution battles that frequently matter more than the verdict itself.
Applied Insight: Health-care-fraud cases in this district rarely begin with an arrest. They begin with an audit letter, a payment suspension, or a civil investigative demand — and the months between that first signal and a charging decision are when the case is most movable. By the time an EDMI health-care indictment is returned, the government has usually been building it for years; the defense should not start from zero on arraignment day.
Corruption, Health Care Fraud, and the Canadian Border
The office prosecuting these cases is formidable: roughly 135 Assistant U.S. Attorneys organized into Criminal, Civil, Appellate, and Administrative divisions, led as of mid-2026 by United States Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr., who holds a presidential appointment confirmed by the Senate. The office reports recovering over $100 million annually through forfeitures and civil settlements — a reminder that in this district, the financial side of a criminal case is never an afterthought.
Two dockets define EDMI’s reputation. The first is public corruption, a tradition of major prosecutions of state and local officials that continues to shape how aggressively the office charges. The legal terrain has shifted in the defense’s favor: Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), holds that 18 U.S.C. § 666 criminalizes bribes to state and local officials but not after-the-fact gratuities, and Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023), cabins honest-services fraud theories against private persons with government influence. The second is health care fraud — this district produced one of the most infamous medical-fraud prosecutions in American history, the Detroit-area oncologist whose victim docket the USAO still maintains online, and EDMI remains a perennial center of national enforcement actions against billing fraud, kickbacks, and medically unnecessary treatment. Dubin v. United States, 599 U.S. 110 (2023), which confines aggravated identity theft under § 1028A to cases where identity misuse is the crux of the offense, is now a key shield against charge-stacking in those cases.
And then there is the border. The Detroit-Windsor crossings — the busiest commercial land border in North America — give this district a docket most interior courts never touch: smuggling and export-control cases, cross-border financial flows, and immigration-adjacent prosecutions that reached 8.6% of FY2024 sentencings, a high figure for a northern district. Recent months show the range: a 122-month sentence in a $63 million mail-theft conspiracy announced in June 2026, alongside computer-intrusion and threat prosecutions out of the district’s universities. All of it is reported on the office’s own channels; none of it suggests a slow season.
FCI Milan: The District’s Federal Prison and Detention Center
The Bureau of Prisons’ presence in this district is FCI Milan in Washtenaw County, about forty miles southwest of Detroit — a low-security correctional institution that also operates a federal detention function and held roughly 1,500 prisoners as of June 2026, per BOP data. For defendants denied bond, Milan is usually where an EDMI case is endured; for the convicted, it generates the district’s 28 U.S.C. § 2241 docket over sentence computation, credits, and Bureau decisions, alongside compassionate release litigation. The FY2025 numbers counsel precision rather than optimism: EDMI judges decided only 9 compassionate-release motions and granted 3 — a small sample against the Sixth Circuit’s 8.9% and the nation’s 14.1% grant rates.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
EDMI’s most important cases have a habit of being decided twice — once in the Levin courthouse and once in Cincinnati. The right to appeal to the Sixth Circuit runs on Rule 4(b)’s fourteen-day clock from entry of judgment, and because the government’s own appellate division will be on the other side of the brief, we treat the appeal as a discipline that starts with the first pretrial motion: objections framed, theories preserved, record citations ready before the district court ever rules.
When the direct appeal ends, the fight can continue: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacking an EDMI conviction or sentence is filed back in this district, and our federal post-conviction practice — ineffective-assistance claims, claims built on the Supreme Court’s narrowed fraud and corruption doctrines, sentencing-error claims — is the deepest part of what we do. For white-collar clients especially, post-conviction strategy in this district often includes restitution and forfeiture follow-on litigation, where six- and seven-figure errors are worth correcting even after the prison term is fixed.
How the Firm Practices in This Court
This is one of the courts where our admission status is the simplest possible kind: Elizabeth Franklin-Best holds standing bar admission in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan — one of seven federal district courts where she is fully admitted — so we enter appearances here directly, with no pro hac vice motion, no local-sponsor requirement, and no delay between engagement and action.
That matters most when time is short — a detention hearing within days, a grand jury return expected, an agent interview already scheduled. Standing admission means our first billable hour in an EDMI matter goes to the case, not the paperwork of getting into the courtroom. Clients whose matters straddle the state can also see how we approach the Western District of Michigan, where we appear pro hac vice.
Admission opens the door; what happens inside is what counts. EDMI cases reward counsel fluent in the modern white-collar canon — Snyder, Percoco, Dubin, and the loss-and-restitution caselaw that drives outcomes — and comfortable carrying a case from a Detroit courtroom to the Sixth Circuit and, where warranted, beyond. That is the practice Elizabeth Franklin-Best has built, as author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction, admitted before all twelve federal courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, and counsel in more than 330 federal proceedings — over 100 of them appeals — across the country’s federal courts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What area does the Eastern District of Michigan cover?
Thirty-four counties of eastern Michigan — metro Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, the Thumb, and north to the Mackinac Bridge — home to about 6.5 million people. Staffed courthouses operate in Detroit (the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse), Ann Arbor, Flint, Bay City, and Port Huron.
Who prosecutes federal crimes in the Eastern District of Michigan?
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan — roughly 135 federal prosecutors working from Detroit, Flint, and Bay City. As of mid-2026 the office is led by Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr., and its signature dockets are health-care fraud, public corruption, firearms, and border-related prosecutions.
Which appeals court covers the Eastern District of Michigan?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. Detroit’s major fraud and corruption cases have repeatedly become the vehicles through which appellate doctrine gets made, which is why serious EDMI defense work treats every filing as a future appellate record.
How does a federal criminal case proceed in the Eastern District of Michigan?
Grand jury indictment, arraignment and a detention decision before a magistrate judge, pretrial and discovery litigation — often enormous in white-collar cases — then plea or trial and sentencing. In fiscal year 2024 the district sentenced 642 people, and 96.1% of convictions came by guilty plea.
Is the firm admitted to practice in the Eastern District of Michigan?
Yes — by standing bar admission rather than case-by-case motion. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is fully admitted to this court, one of seven federal district courts where she holds direct admission, so we can enter an appearance in an EDMI case immediately.
Does the firm handle federal cases in the Eastern District of Michigan?
Yes. We defend EDMI investigations and indictments, brief and argue Sixth Circuit appeals, and litigate Section 2255 motions, Section 2241 petitions, and compassionate-release matters arising from this district and FCI Milan.
What kinds of cases is the Eastern District of Michigan known for?
Public corruption and health-care fraud, above all. This district has produced some of the country’s most prominent prosecutions of public officials and medical providers. It also carries a firearms docket that ran nearly double the national share in fiscal year 2024, plus border-driven smuggling and export cases through the Detroit-Windsor crossings.
What is FCI Milan and who is held there?
FCI Milan is the Bureau of Prisons’ low-security correctional institution in Washtenaw County, about forty miles southwest of Detroit, and it also serves a federal detention function for people awaiting trial or sentencing in this district. It held roughly 1,500 prisoners as of June 2026, and habeas petitions under Section 2241 from Milan are filed in this court.
Do federal fraud sentences in EDMI turn mostly on the amount of loss?
To a striking degree, yes. The Guidelines drive fraud sentences primarily through the loss table, so disputes over intended versus actual loss, credits against loss, and restitution often matter more than anything else after conviction. Since the 2024 amendment moved the intended-loss rule into the guideline’s text, those calculations are litigated text-first — and they are a core focus of our sentencing work in this district.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
Eastern District of Michigan cases tend to be document-heavy, theory-driven, and unforgiving of late starts. Whether yours is a corruption inquiry, a billing-fraud investigation, a border case, or a conviction that needs appellate or post-conviction review, the paid, one-hour initial consultation is where we read the situation with you and lay out the moves that are actually available.