For much of my life, investigations were something being done to me.

I knew what it felt like to be watched, followed, documented, and studied. I understood surveillance from the other side of the lens. Long before I ever thought about becoming an investigator, I had developed an awareness of patterns, details, movements, and the way investigators build cases.

But understanding how to avoid an investigation and understanding how to conduct one are two very different things.

My transition between those worlds began in 2015.

I was sitting in jail when my public defender handed me a stack of discovery so thick it looked like a phone book. Until then, I had never actually read a police report.

It took me days to get through it.

There was something strange about reading years of investigative work involving my own life. I was seeing myself through the eyes of investigators—where they believed I had been, what they believed I was doing, how they interpreted my movements, and how they were attempting to establish those movements through evidence.

Then I read it again.

And again.

That was when I noticed something.

Earlier reports described law enforcement attempting to locate me through cell-phone pings. I changed phones frequently, which complicated those efforts. But later reports began describing my location differently.

The language had changed.

I started comparing dates, reports, and investigative activity. Based on what I was reading, I came to believe law enforcement had begun using a tracking device before obtaining judicial authorization for it.

At the time, I was representing myself.

So I challenged it.

Learning the Law From the Other Side

That forced me into constitutional law, search-and-seizure law, motions, evidentiary hearings, and precedent. Eventually I found United States v. Jones, the United States Supreme Court case addressing law enforcement’s installation and use of a GPS tracking device on a vehicle.

Something clicked.

I could read this stuff.

More importantly, I could understand it.

The law stopped looking like some inaccessible language belonging exclusively to judges and attorneys. I began understanding how rules, facts, procedure, evidence, and precedent fit together.

That discovery changed the direction of my life.

I eventually went to prison. And prison, strangely enough, became another part of my legal education.

Some extraordinarily intelligent people are incarcerated, and when someone’s freedom depends upon understanding the law, legal research can become intensely personal. I spent time around people studying appellate decisions, constitutional issues, evidentiary rules, and their own cases.

I continued studying.

I started college.

And when I came home, I kept working on cases.

At first, becoming an attorney wasn’t even the goal. In fact, I didn’t particularly trust attorneys because of my own experiences with the criminal justice system. What I wanted was knowledge. I wanted to understand the law well enough that people could rely on the information I gave them.

Turning Experience Into Purpose

That eventually led me to establish McGowan & Associates as a platform for legal research and case review.

A lot of the people who came to me were incarcerated or facing criminal charges. They would see something in their case that didn’t make sense but didn’t know how to articulate it legally. Sometimes their attorneys were carrying enormous caseloads and simply didn’t have the time to investigate every factual inconsistency as deeply as the person whose freedom depended upon it wanted them to.

I began helping people identify the questions.

Sometimes those questions revealed factual inconsistencies. Sometimes they raised constitutional issues. Sometimes they simply gave someone enough understanding of their own case to have a more informed conversation with their attorney.

And sometimes an issue never resulted in a judge issuing some dramatic ruling. Instead, it changed the conversation surrounding a plea or helped someone avoid incarceration.

That taught me something important:

Investigation and litigation are not the same thing.

A lawyer may understand the law perfectly and still need someone willing to spend hours examining records, timelines, video, reports, statements, and small inconsistencies that initially appear insignificant.

That is where I found my place.

My education continued alongside that work. I earned an Associate of Business Administration from Jackson College and later completed my Bachelor of Arts in Law at Wayne State University, with a minor in Criminal Justice.

But education did something beyond giving me credentials.

It gave names, structure, doctrine, and context to things I had already experienced firsthand.

I had represented myself in serious criminal proceedings. I had written motions and briefs. I had cross-examined police officers. I had participated in evidentiary hearings. I had researched constitutional questions because the outcome affected my own freedom.

Now I was studying those same institutions academically.

Eventually, something else changed.

I realized I wanted the ability to legally advise people, not merely identify issues for them to discuss with someone else. Law school became the natural next step.

But investigation remained where my heart was.

Where It Led Me

Today, when I review discovery from the perspective of an investigator, there is a strange symmetry to it.

In 2015, I sat incarcerated with an enormous stack of discovery written about me, examining every page looking for the detail investigators may have overlooked.

Today, I can sit on the other side of that equation—reviewing discovery, evidence, reports, timelines, and investigative decisions to determine what questions still need to be asked.

The skills required are not entirely foreign to the life I once lived.

Serious investigations require patience, observation, anticipation, pattern recognition, attention to detail, and an understanding that small mistakes can have enormous consequences. Those same instincts can develop in environments where people know they are being watched and understand that mistakes can cost them their freedom.

What changed was the purpose.

Those abilities are now directed toward finding facts, examining evidence, identifying unanswered questions, and helping people understand what happened.

That evolution ultimately led me to create the Michigan Justice Investigation Project.

MJIP exists because too many people encounter serious questions involving justice without having the resources, visibility, or institutional influence necessary to pursue answers. Families of homicide victims can spend years wondering what happened. Missing-person cases can lose public attention. People claiming wrongful convictions may struggle to get anyone to examine old evidence again. Individuals confronting government institutions may simply not know where to begin.

I cannot promise anyone the answer they want.

An investigator shouldn’t.

What I can promise is that the facts deserve to be examined honestly, wherever they lead.

My past is part of why I believe that so strongly.

I don’t erase it, and I don’t pretend it happened to somebody else. I made decisions. Those decisions had consequences—not only for me, but for people who loved me.

For years, I had respect in one world.

Now I want to earn the respect of people in this one.

Not by pretending I arrived here through a conventional path, but by demonstrating what I can contribute because I didn’t.

The first investigation I ever truly studied was my own.

I had no idea then that I was beginning to learn the work that would eventually become my purpose.