The Muskegon Correctional Facility has reopened and will employ 240 people.

That is freeing up space for inmates in other parts of the state.

Michigan began closing prisons in 2007 as part of budget cuts. The Muskegon Correctional Facility was shut down in 2009.

Now the 1,300 bed, medium-security facility is open again and the state has begun transferring inmates from other places—mostly from the Ryan Correction Facility in Detroit.

Russ Marlan is a Department of Corrections spokesman.

“We have a tremendous need for some custody beds in the metro Detroit area, and so by repurposing Ryan Correctional Facility, it will allow us to create some short-term custody beds in that area,” he said.

The Michigan Supreme Court formally opens its 2012 session this week.

Its first cases deal with no-fault insurance benefits, Michigan’s open meetings law, and medical marijuana.      

The first arguments of the court’s session will be on the case of a woman who wants her auto no-fault coverage to pay for her treatments for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

She was diagnosed after witnessing her son’s death in a motorcycle accident. She was following him in her car when he was struck by another vehicle.

Her insurance company says her condition was not the direct result of anything that happened with her car.          

FLINT, Mich. (AP) - A man charged in a series of stabbings in a Michigan city in 2010 will face no additional trials unless his first murder conviction is overturned on appeal.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton says two murder cases and six attempted murder cases will be suspended against Elias Abuelazam. The action was disclosed Friday at a court in Flint.

Leyton says additional trials would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Abuelazam, a native of Israel, has been sentenced to life in prison without parole after a first murder trial last spring.

People convicted of first-degree murder in Michigan are automatically entitled to an appeal. Abuelazam's is in the early stages.

Abuelazam defense attorney Ed Zeineh called the prosecutor's decision appropriate.

An attempted murder case is pending in Ohio.