The Circuit Courts have jurisdiction over felonies and serious misdemeanors. The public local rules of court don't provide any specific subset of cases in which criminal cases are commenced directly in the Circuit Court.
So, this is probably done in the discretion of the prosecutor's office in coordination the law enforcement officers under the prosecutor's jurisdiction.
Most likely, the prosecutor's office identifies cases where the likelihood of an early resolution in the District Court before the case is bound over to the Circuit Court is unlikely, and pre-trial motion practice before the case reaches the Circuit Court would otherwise be likely.
For example, if the preliminary examination and related motion practice were likely to be more lengthy than usual, the prosecutor might choose to divert it to the Circuit Court to relieve the District Court judge of that time consuming burden on the District Court judge's docket.
Alternately, the prosecutor's office may directly file cases in Circuit Courts in cases where it would prefer not to have the case handled by a District Court judge (perhaps a newly appointed and inexperienced judge with only limited criminal law experience prior to becoming a judge) which the prosecutor's office does not believe would handle the case well, in terms of efficiency, in terms of expected bad judgment on bail issues, or due to a lack of sufficient attention to detailed procedural requirements in a high stakes case like a murder case where a mistake would be likely to lead to an appeal.
