Richard Wershe Jr. the teenager and the adult
The time has finally come.
The Michigan Parole is expected to decide next Friday during an executive session whether convicted cocaine trafficker Richard “White Boy Rick” Wershe Jr., who has served 29 years in prison, should be paroled, Orlandar Brand-Williams of The Detroit News reports.
Wershe, 47, had a hearing in Jackson on June 8 before two of the 10 parole board members and an assistant attorney general.
"All I can give you is my word," Wershe said at the hearing of his vow to remain on the straight and narrow while on the outside. "If my word is no good I can't give you anything else."
At least six of the 10 members must vote in his favor for him to get parole.
Even if he's paroled from Michigan, he may have to serve out a sentence in Florida for being part of a car theft ring while he was in prison there under the witness protection program. He was in the program after helping the FBI in a sting in Michigan that sent some crooked cops to prison, along with then-Mayor Coleman A. Young's common law brother-in-law.
After the Florida conviction, he was kicked out of the program and returned to the Michigan prison system. He's currently in a facility in northern Michigan.
Wershe, who was already serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole in Michigan, was sentenced in 2005 in Florida to five years in prison.
Wershe's attorney, Ralph Musilli, says his client would have to serve about 22 months of that Florida sentence.
However, he tells The News that hopes to make the Florida case go away by filing a motion asking that the state give Wershe full credit for time served concurrently while in Michigan.
