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Rick "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr, the well-known Detroit teenage drug trafficker who was sent to prison for life more than 26 years ago, has scored his first court victory in more than two decades in his bid to get parole.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled in an opinion filed Wednesday that Wershe is entitled to a fair hearing in his bid for state parole, and remanded his lawsuit against the Michigan Parole Board back for further proceedings to the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, which had initially rejected his request.
"It’s a complete victory," said Wershe's attorney Ralph Musilli.
Wershe, arrested as a 17-year-old in 1987 with $25,000 in cash while driving a rented Thunderbird, was linked to eight kilos of cocaine.
At a 2003 parole hearing, Musilli says, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office sent people who testified falsely. Musilli says he has evidence, including a statement from an ex-cop, that bears that out.
Wershe hasn't gotten another hearing since 2003. In 2012, according to the attorney, the state parole board declined to hold a hearing and said Wershe could apply again in 2017.
Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, said Wednesday that Musilli's comment about the prosecutor's office sending people to testify falsely at the 2003 hearing "has no factual basis."
She added: "It's the position of the Prosecutor Kym Worthy that she doesn't feel it's appropriate for him to be paroled."
The Court of Appeals bases its new ruling on a case known as Graham v. Florida, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the Eighth Amendment requires juvenile offenders sentenced to life in prison for non-homicide crimes to have a meaningful chance to obtain parole. Musilli says Wershe has never had that.
The Court of Appeals, in its ruling, noted that the Supreme Court case does not guarantee freedom to a juvenile offender, but a state must "give defendants like Graham some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. It is for the state, in the first instance, to explore the means and mechanisms for compliance."
Wershe was arrested at age 17 and convicted on Jan. 15, 1988 and sentenced to life in prison without parole under a mandatory life sentence law in Michigan. The state law later changed, and in 1999, he was re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
