LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Michigan State Police acted with “animus” when it fired ex-trooper Megan Moryc on accusations of perjury and her firing has been overturned, an arbitrator determined Monday.
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Moryc was fired Feb. 13, 2025, on accusations of perjury primarily stemming from the divorce trial of her former discipline coaching officer and then-boyfriend, Trevin Antcliff and his then-wife Nina Antcliff in 2018. Whereas prosecutors declined to cost her with perjury, an MSP investigation concluded that she had lied below oath and to investigators on a number of events in a number of venues.
Nonetheless, in a 25-page opinion, arbitrator Thomas J. Barnes concluded that not solely had Moryc not dedicated perjury nor lied in any case, however the Michigan State Police, acted with “animus” — the authorized time period for prejudice or hostility — towards Moryc, of their repeated makes an attempt to sever her employment with the group.
The state police accused Moryc of mendacity or exaggerating her statements in court docket and to investigators. In her Assertion of Prices (SOC) issued in December 2024, the state police say she perjured herself in the course of the divorce trial by knowingly making false statements that “minimized [her] association” with Trevin Antcliff, “significantly exaggerated” her testimony, and continued to “misrepresent” her relationship with the person in the course of the MSP’s inner investigation.
Nonetheless, Barnes refuted these accusations, saying Moryc didn’t commit perjury as a result of the questions the state police desired to be answered merely weren’t requested in court docket. He went additional, saying that it’s “almost universally understood” that attorneys inform their witnesses to not volunteer info, and that if extra info is required, further questions are requested.
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That didn’t occur in Moryc’s testimony. In response to court docket data, she was requested how she would describe her relationship with Trevin Antcliff, to which she known as him “one of my best friends,” and advised the court docket that they started courting towards the tip of 2017. What she didn’t disclose was that she and Trevin Antcliff had been having intercourse earlier than that point. Barnes says that isn’t perjury.
“The department would say, well that’s not a complete answer; that she should have acknowledged that at some point in December 2016 – January 2017 she was having sex with Trooper Antcliff,” Barnes writes. “She wasn’t asked that question.”
Along with questioning the substance the MSP’s argument, Barnes additionally says in his opinion that the timing of the allegations added “additional doubt” to their validity, as they had been made 5 years later throughout an MSP investigation into Moryc’s accusations of home assault towards Trevin Antcliff. Following an interview with investigators, Nina Antcliff despatched them a voicemail wherein she mentioned Moryc was having an affair with Trevin Antcliff whereas she was married to the latter and “perjured herself” on the stand in 2018.
That, Barnes says, was unfair to Moryc.
“Discharge of an employee nearly five years after the late discovery of a spurned spouse’s claim of perjury is beyond the realm of the fair imposition of discipline,” wrote Barnes.
Barnes discovered the opposite allegations towards Moryc, together with claims that she exaggerated her testimony that they’d simply come from a very grotesque tried suicide to elucidate why she and Trevin Antcliff had been discovered partially clothed in his and his spouse’s residence, to be equally weak. He additionally famous that there have been “shortcomings” in each inner MSP investigations that concluded Moryc had lied, together with asking Moryc a number of questions directly, and the quotation of particular phrases from court docket transcripts as proof — transcripts that don’t at all times reveal particular phrase alternative.
He notably took concern with the MSP’s dissection of Moryc’s definition of relationship phrases, similar to her notion of a courting relationship vs. a friends-with-benefits one, how she outlined romance and relationships, and different comparable phrases, on which a lot of their argument towards her hinged upon. Regardless of discovering her solutions “convenient,” he holds that they weren’t intentionally untruthful.
“The fact that I may not like her answers does not distract from the fact that they were her beliefs and her understanding of the questions, her answers were responsive truthfully to the questions the questions that were being asked, including the compound questions,” he wrote. “Under these circumstances, I cannot conclude that discharge was anywhere near a proper discipline for the Grievant [Moryc] in this matter.”
The arbitrator concluded his opinion by ordering Moryc to be reinstated, however not earlier than saying he was “troubled” by earlier occasions concerning Moryc to the purpose of concluding the MSP had hostile intent in its therapy of her, together with makes an attempt to struggle the earlier arbitrator’s conclusion that she ought to be suspended for 30 days regardless of the provisions of an arbitration being that the arbitrator’s awards are typically unappealable.
He additionally says that different actions appeared to point hostile intent on a part of the MSP, together with saying they maintained that Moryc’s testimony was exaggerated with no motion taken to legally set up it was, they speculated on the credibility of an skilled decide’s potential to evaluate witnesses in a divorce case, and so they pursued two legal warrants for Moryc in two separate counties concerning two separate incidents — each of which had been dismissed by prosecutors.
“Thus, the Employer wasn’t able to get complaints issued, let alone a conviction on conduct that it thought was perjurious and an assault,” wrote Barnes. “That should have been a red flag to the Employer [MSP] that perhaps it should have reviewed at least its characterization of the testimony given in Court on January 23, 2018.”
He ordered the earlier arbitration award to face and for Moryc to be reinstated with no backpay, below the steering of a mentor to assist her assimilate again into her job with regulation enforcement.
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6 Information is reaching out to MSP, lawmakers and others for response to this determination and can report on them as soon as acquired.
