Massachusetts Jewish Man Marc Aisen is Finally Free from Michigan Gulag

Here is a sentence that should stop every American cold: a man can be arrested at home in one state, hauled a thousand miles to another, and locked up for two and a half years — for sending emails to politicians.

That is what happened to Marc William Aisen.

On June 30, 2026, in Oakland County Circuit Court, Judge Yasmine I. Poles sentenced Aisen to 365 days in jail on each of two felony counts — and then credited him with the 931 days he had already served awaiting trial. In plain terms: the system held him longer than the sentence it ultimately imposed, and only now, with the time already extracted from his life, is he walking free. (People of the State of Michigan v. Aisen, No. 2024-287987-FH.)

The timing makes the sentence all the more striking. The very question at the heart of this case — whether these Michigan statutes can be enforced consistent with the First Amendment — is currently before the Michigan Supreme Court in a separate matter. With the laws' constitutionality unsettled at the state's highest court, Aisen's supporters argue the judge had every reason to proceed with caution; instead, they say, she came down hard.

His crime? Words.

In July 2023, from his apartment in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Aisen emailed officials in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, accusing the township treasurer, Michael Schostak, of serious wrongdoing. The messages were caustic — offensive, even — and Schostak has denied the allegations and called them defamatory. (The Jewish Legal News is not reproducing the contents; the underlying accusations are unproven.) But here is what the messages were not: threats of violence. Aisen's attorneys say no threat to anyone's safety appears anywhere in them. What the treasurer objected to, in his own cease-and-desist letter, was the content of the criticism — language he called “vile” and “hateful,” and accusations he called “defamatory.”

Schostak sent that letter on official township letterhead, copying the police chief and a sergeant. Five months later, Aisen was under arrest.

Two statutes, one chilling reach

The state charged Aisen under two laws every American — not just every Michigander — should know about. Aisen never set foot in Michigan when he sent those emails; he was a Massachusetts resident, extradited a thousand miles to be prosecuted under them. What reached him in Marblehead can reach a critic in any state:

• MCL 750.411s, Unlawful Posting of a Message — a felony carrying up to two years, triggered when a message could cause unwanted contacts that leave a “victim” feeling “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.” Not threatened with harm — merely frightened. By that standard, a public official who claims a critic's email unsettled him can set the machinery of arrest in motion.
• MCL 752.797, Using a Computer to Commit a Crime — a felony enhancer that stacks years of additional exposure onto the underlying offense, for the sin of having used a keyboard.

On May 12, 2026, a jury convicted Aisen on both. The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, led by Karen McDonald, secured the verdict. The court entered a no-contact order protecting Schostak.

Why this should alarm everyone

A jury's verdict settles the legal question of guilt under these statutes. It does not settle the constitutional one — and that question is enormous. American law has long held that public officials must endure sharp, unpleasant, even outrageous criticism; the First Amendment's protection of the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” exists precisely to shield citizens who accuse the powerful of wrongdoing. The narrow exceptions — true threats of violence, genuine criminal harassment — were never meant to swallow that rule. Aisen's defenders argue this prosecution did exactly that: it converted offensive political speech into a felony.

The mechanics make it worse. A statute that turns on whether someone felt frightened invites selective enforcement against unpopular speakers. An extradition across state lines for emails raises the specter of any official, anywhere, reaching into another state to punish a critic. And a pretrial detention that outlasts the sentence itself — implicating Michigan's own 180-day rule, designed to prevent precisely this — shows how the process can become the punishment, conviction or not.

If the state can do this to Marc Aisen, civil-liberties advocates warn, it can do it to anyone whose words a powerful person finds frightening.

A defense team takes up the case

Aisen did not face the system alone. Rabbi Jon Gross, Esq., an attorney with the Jewish Community Advocacy Council (JCAC), learned of the case while Aisen sat in an Oakland County jail and flew to Michigan to represent him, enlisting David Peters of the Pacific Justice Institute to join the defense.

“As soon as I learned about Mr. Aisen languishing in jail unfairly for over two years, I did everything I could to bring attention and resources to this case,” said Rabbi Gross. “We are pleased that Marc Aisen is now a free man.”

The team has since filed a First Amendment action against Michael Schostak, the Bloomfield Township treasurer whose complaint set the prosecution in motion. Mark L. Javitch, Esq., also of the JCAC, is representing Aisen in that action.

The takeaway

Marc Aisen is free today, but the precedent is not. A felony conviction for emailing public officials now sits on the books in Michigan, and an appeal may follow. Whatever one thinks of Aisen's words — and no matter how offensive to some — the principle his case puts at risk belongs to all of us: the right to confront our government, in our own words, without a jail cell waiting at the end of the sentence.

The Jewish Legal News will continue to follow this case.

Disclosure: The Jewish Legal News is acquainted with members of Mr. Aisen's defense team.