Sunday, April 24, 2016

Rick Wershe, Kym Worthy and Justice for All

Two former Detroit police officers were charged last week with misconduct in office and falsifying police reports in a case where the evidence showed they planted a bag of heroin in a man’s car in order to arrest him on drug possession charges. The last four Informant America blog posts have described, in detail, the unanswered questions, considerable holes—and police perjury—in the prosecution’s drug case against Richard Wershe, Jr. Which leaves a question: Why is Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy afraid of a public review of whether Rick Wershe was/is a menace to society?

Former Detroit police officers Steven Fultz, 34, and John McKee, 43, claimed they watched a 27-year old Detroit man toss a bag of suspected heroin from his car in a Detroit neighborhood in January, 2015. They arrested the man and charged him with possession of heroin.


Former Detroit Police Officers John McKee and Steven Fultz (Detroit Police photos)



Their story fell apart when the case was going to trial. Audio tapes from their police car revealed the officers planned to file a false report about the incident to justify the man’s arrest. Now they are the ones who are facing prison time.

It appears Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy did the right thing in this case. So why won’t she do the right thing in the Rick Wershe case? The one that sent him to prison for life?

If Kym Worthy cares to look she will find that the arresting officer in Wershe’s case, Rodney Grandison committed perjury—lied—under oath at the trial when he said he didn’t know Rick Wershe and had never met him before arresting him.

Wershe says he knew Officer Grandison well enough to smoke pot with him from time to time before the big bust.

Now it might be Wershe’s word against one of Detroit’s, uh, finest, a police officer sworn to uphold the law. Except for one thing.

Former Detroit FBI agent Herman Groman, Wershe’s “handler” when he was working as a confidential informant for a federal drug task force, paid a visit to Wershe when he was in Marquette State Prison. Groman arranged with prison officials to have Wershe call Grandison at home from a prison phone, which Groman wired up to record the conversation.

Wershe called Grandison and they chit-chatted about a minor matter for maybe ten minutes or so, long enough to clearly establish that Grandison knew Wershe. Grandison didn’t acted surprised or shocked that Wershe was on the other end of the line. There was no indication he didn’t know Wershe. On the contrary. He jumped right in to the conversation. What they talked about isn’t important. The key to it is the tape recorded phone call establishes clearly and beyond doubt that Grandison committed a felony—perjury—when he told the Wershe jury that he did not know the defendant.

Recent Informant America blog posts have noted the civilian witnesses in Wershe’s trial contradicted one another in their testimony. One said she was Wershe walking between some houses toward her with a box in his arms. Another, who was sitting on his front porch next door to the female witness said Wershe did NOT have a box in his arms. This testimony was supposed to tie Wershe to a box of cocaine retrieved about two hours after his arrest.

And there’s the strange unexplained story of the box itself. It was found under a porch by neighbors who swore it was taped shut when they found it.

Officer Greg Woods, a Detroit narc on the self-styled No Crack Crew, showed up about two hours after Wershe’s arrest to take custody of the box. Woods testified when he received it, it the box was open and there were eight kilos of cocaine inside. Rick Wershe says today he never saw or touched the box but that he was supposed to receive a ten-kilo shipment of cocaine that day from Miami. Wershe’s fingerprints and palm prints were not found on the box.

Let’s review: We have tape-recorded evidence one of the prosecution’s police witnesses in Wershe’s drug trial perjured himself on the witness stand. We have conflicting eyewitness testimony. We have what appears to be tainted drug evidence with no physical evidence tying it to Wershe.

A man is serving a life prison sentence on a case at least as flimsy as the one Kym Worthy tossed and saw fit to file charges against the police officers who fabricated the case.
The statute of limitations is long past on charging Grandison for perjury in the Wershe case.


Kym Worthy, Wayne County Prosecutor (Detroit Free Press photo)



But if, IF, Kym Worthy were truly interested in justice in all cases and not just some cases, she would order a thorough review of Wershe’s case and all the wild accusations that he was a white teen drug lord and drug kingpin who ruled the roost over street-hardened adult black men in Detroit. That’s if she were interested in justice for all. Don’t hold your breath. 

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Rick Wershe is serving life for a shaky and shady drug conviction - Pt. 4


Several past Informant America blog posts have suggested the case that sent Richard J. Wershe, Jr. to prison for life was questionable at best. He was arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver over 650 grams of cocaine. The police case had gaping holes in it which were helped by Wershe’s own defense team, two lawyers loyal to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and believed to be intent on ensuring Wershe went to prison for a long, long time. It is enlightening—and disturbing—to take a hard look at the evidence—or lack of it—behind Rick Wershe’s life prison term.

PART FOUR—CONCLUSION OF THIS SERIES

The previous three blog posts on Informant America have recounted the discrepancies and police misconduct that surrounded Richard J. Wershe Jr.’s arrest on a drug charge that has kept him in prison for 28 years—all of his adult life.

Richard J. Wershe, Jr. in court, September, 2015 (David Coates, Detroit News via AP)


Here, one more time, is a recap of Wershe’s arrest the night of May 22, 1987:

  • Rick Wershe and a pal are stopped by the police on a pretext traffic stop near his home.
  • Wershe had a shopping bag of cash but no drugs. His sister grabs the bag before the police can and she runs into her house with the cash.
  • A curious crowd spills into the street along with dozens of cops.
  • Rick Wershe walks away empty-handed.
  • A teenage neighbor claims she saw Wershe walking between houses toward her house carrying a large box.
  • The neighbor claims Wershe asked her to put the box behind her house. She said no.
  • A second neighbor, an adult male who lives next door to the teen witness, said he saw Wershe at the same time as the teen, but he testified Wershe wasn’t carrying a box.
  • Wershe is found by the police and taken in to custody. As the police walk him back to the scene of the traffic stop Officer Rodney Grandison suddenly pistol whips Wershe, shattering his eye socket. He is thrown to the ground, then Grandison and another officer handcuff him and lift him by a gold chain around his neck. Next they throw him by the neck and chain, while handcuffed, over a fence gate. Other officers arrive and beat and stomp Wershe while he’s on the ground. The beating was so severe Wershe was taken to a hospital instead of jail that night.
  • Afterward the neighbors search the back yard for a box and they find one under a porch. The box is taken in to the teen girl’s house. A neighbor/witness said the box was taped shut.
  • About two hours later, acting on a mysterious “anonymous phone tip”, the police arrive and take the box. The officer who took possession of the box says it was partially open when he took control of the box.


When the case came up for preliminary exam—a procedure where a judge listens to enough testimony and considers enough evidence to decide whether the case should go to a jury—one of the first things Bill Bufalino, Wershe’s defense attorney, did was file a motion to suppress the evidence, the evidence being the box containing eight kilos of cocaine. This is something any good defense attorney would do, especially in a case like this.

In a previous blog post Rick Wershe said he did receive a cocaine shipment that day but he never saw it or touched it. His friends had it. Wershe said the shipment contained ten kilos of cocaine, not eight. Yet when the police took custody of the box that night, it had been opened by someone and they reported only eight kilos were inside. The neighbors said when they retrieved the box it was taped shut. Either the neighbor-witnesses are lying and one of them stole two kilos of cocaine, or the police opened the box, helped themselves to two kilos of cocaine, and turned in as evidence a box with eight kilos.

The prosecution didn't exactly have a slam-dunk case. A conviction was less than assured. But Rick Wershe made a fateful mistake between the preliminary exam and his trial several months later.

He listened to the advice of Cathy Volsan Curry, the niece of Detroit mayor Coleman Young. Wershe had been sleeping with Cathy Volsan Curry whose husband was in prison for a drug conviction brought about as a result of Wershe’s undercover work as an FBI informant. Wershe says she initiated the affair.

Cathy Volsan Curry (FBI Surveillance photo)


After his arrest, Wershe says Ms. Volsan Curry urged him to replace Bufalino as his defense attorney with a black defense team; attorneys Ed Bell and Sam Gardner. She told Wershe her “family” said it would be the smart thing to do.

Bell and Gardner were former county judges with plenty of experience with criminal legal procedure, both were major figures in Black politics in Detroit and both were closely allied with Coleman Young. Mayor Young, now deceased, was almost certainly embarrassed to have the husband of his favorite niece doing time in prison for being a cocaine kingpin in his city. Mayor Young was almost certainly embarrassed in equal measure to have his favorite niece sleeping with a young white guy charged with possessing a large quantity of cocaine.

What we don’t know is exactly when Coleman Young found out Richard Wershe, Jr. was a paid FBI confidential informant, a “stool pigeon” in the mayor’s vocabulary. That, most assuredly, would put hizzoner over the edge. The FBI had been trying to make a criminal case against Coleman Young dating back to the Red Scare Days of the early 50s when Young was suspected of being a Communist sympathizer. The animosity between Coleman Young and the FBI was mutual. As one FBI agent put it, “We considered him a target and he considered us the enemy.”

Rick Wershe listened to Cathy Volsan Curry and hired Bell and Gardner to take charge of his defense. Bufalino was still on the team but he was now playing second string to the two black attorneys.

The late William Bufalino II


Bufalino believed the mysterious box of cocaine was evidence that could be successfully challenged in court. “’Well if Rick had a box that was taped shut, this couldn’t be the same box,’” Wershe remembers Bufalino saying. Bufalino knew the police and the prosecutor didn’t have a good answer for that. And therein was hope for an acquittal or a strong issue for appeal.

Greg Woods, the police narc who took custody of the box from the neighbors some two hours after Wershe was arrested, testified the box was definitely open when he took custody of it.

Clearly, the box of cocaine was a matter of dispute, which is something any defense attorney would consider ammunition for acquittal or appeal.

The late Ed Bell


Yet, the first thing Bell did when he took over Wershe’s defense was to withdraw Bufalino’s motion to suppress the evidence in the case.

"I remember him (Bufalino) and Bell got in to a big thing about that,” Wershe told me in a recent phone interview from prison. "Bill didn’t understand why he (Bell) withdrew the motion to suppress. Bill explained it to me like, ‘Rick, why withdraw a motion that can’t hurt us no matter what? If we win, they have no evidence, (if not) we’re right in the same place that we are.’"

Q: What was Bell’s argument?
A: “That he had things going on behind the scenes. 'Don’t worry about nothin’. He told both of us that.”

Bell had things going on behind the scenes, alright. But it wasn’t with the trial judge. More likely it was a get-even scheme cooked up with Coleman Young to get rid of Wershe, the FBI informant, forever, without resorting to murder. Both men knew Wershe was facing mandatory life in prison without parole.

"That’s when Bill told me, he said, ‘Rick, I think he sold you out,'" Wershe recalls Bufalino telling him. "'There’s no rational reason to pull this motion. None. If we win, we party. If we lose we’re right in the same situation.’ He said, ‘So tell me, why would we pull it?’"

Rick Wershe lost. A jury convicted him. He was sentenced to prison for life. He’s still there. Eventually the Michigan Supreme Court and the legislature changed Michigan’s “650” law which said anyone convicted of possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine must serve a mandatory life without parole sentence.

After years in prison Wershe got a parole hearing. Once. In 2003. At that hearing, attorney Bufalino testified under oath before the Michigan Parole Board. He didn’t mince words.

"It was Bell and Gardner,” Bufalino testified. “They guaranteed him (Wershe) that he would walk. They pulled a motion, a dispositive motion on a search and seizure issue regarding this case. They pulled the motion. They hung this boy out to dry."

Bufalino also testified the Mayor of the City of Detroit, Coleman Young, thought the Rick Wershe case was important enough to stick his nose in it, a most unusual thing for a mayor to do; meddle in a criminal case.

"I was personally told by Coleman Young that this...'stay out of this'," Bufalino said Young warned him. "This is bigger than you think it is."

Any fair-minded person considering a man for parole would sit up and take notice of this accusation from a veteran defense attorney. Bufalino testified to the parole board that Detroit Mayor Coleman Young had interfered in a most sinister and unusual way in a pending criminal case that involved his personal family through Cathy Volsan Curry.

No one on the Michigan Parole Board followed up. No one asked Bufalino, now deceased, to elaborate and explain about this interference in the case that had Rick Wershe before them.

Rick Wershe trusted Cathy Volsan Curry and it was, perhaps, the third-biggest mistake of his life. The second-biggest was his decision to try to become a drug wholesaler after the federal drug task force dropped him as a paid informant and left him to fend for himself as a school dropout with nowhere to turn. His first-biggest mistake had to be his decision to work as a 14-year old confidential informant for the FBI.

“Cathy said her family said I should hire them (Bell and Gardner) because they were the ones that could help me the most,” Wershe remembers her saying.

They helped him alright. They helped him right in to the clothes he would wear the rest of his life: prison jumpsuits.










Sunday, April 10, 2016

Rick Wershe is serving life for a shaky and shady drug conviction - Pt. 3


Several past Informant America blog posts have suggested the case that sent Richard J. Wershe, Jr. to prison for life was questionable at best. He was arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver over 650 grams of cocaine. The police case had gaping holes in it which were helped by Wershe’s own defense team, two lawyers loyal to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and believed to be intent on ensuring Wershe went to prison for a long, long time. It is enlightening—and disturbing—to take a hard look at the evidence—or lack of it—behind Rick Wershe’s life prison term.

PART THREE

In this last of three blog posts about the arrest of Rick Wershe in a drug case that sent him to prison for life, we hear Rick’s version of what happened that night. Before getting to Rick’s side of the story, let’s do a short review from a previous blog post:

At the end of Rick Wershe’s preliminary exam on charges of possession with intent to distribute over 650 grams of cocaine, the following facts raised a lot of questions:

·                     Rick Wershe and a pal are stopped by the police on a pretext traffic stop near his home.
·                     Wershe had a shopping bag of cash but no drugs. His sister grabs the bag before the police can and she runs into her house with the cash.
·                     A curious crowd spills into the street along with dozens of cops.
·                     Rick Wershe walks away empty-handed.
·                     A teenage neighbor claims she saw Wershe walking between houses toward her house carrying a large box.
·                     The neighbor claims Wershe asked her to put the box behind her house. She said no.
·                     A second neighbor, who lives next door to the teen witness said he saw Wershe at the same time as the teen, but he testified Wershe wasn’t carrying a box.
·                     After Wershe leaves with the police the neighbors search the back yard for a box and they find one. The box is taken in to the teen girl’s house. A neighbor/witness said the box was taped shut.
·                     About two hours later, acting on a mysterious “anonymous phone tip”, the police arrive and take the box. The officer who took possession of the box says it was partially open when he took control of the box.

Rick Wershe, Jr. (MDOC photo)



There were varying stories about where Rick went during the chaos and confusion that surrounded the traffic stop near his house.

"I walked through the neighbor’s yard and walked straight to Camden (the next block) and went to Golly’s house, David Golly’s house and sat on the porch," Wershe recalls. He adds he didn’t have a box or anything else in his hands.

One of the pieces that doesn’t fit from the night of the arrest involves the Detroit police officer who made the traffic stop. His name is Rodney Grandison.

Wershe says he knew Grandison well enough to smoke pot with him on several occasions. But at Wershe’s trial, Officer Grandison lied under oath and told the jury he didn’t know Rick Wershe. 

Some time after Wershe went to prison, FBI agent Herm Groman visited him in the state prison in Marquette to ask for his help with an undercover sting operation to catch crooked cops. As part of the cooperative arrangement agent Groman helped Wershe prove Grandison’s trial perjury by arranging to tape a phone call from Wershe to Grandison from the prison. Wershe and Grandison chatted for awhile on the phone. The conversation was inconsequential but it clearly established that Officer Grandison knew Wershe well enough to talk on the phone for 15 or 20 minutes about a private matter Wershe made up for the purposes of the call.

As for the night Wershe was arrested…

"Grandison came through the yard with some other cop not far behind him," Wershe recalls. (He) called me off the porch."

The officers handcuffed Wershe and marched him between the houses and back toward Hampshire St. where the traffic stop began. They came to a gate in a fence.

"As soon as we got in the back yard he (Grandison) hit me in the side of the head with his pistol," Wershe remembers. "My eye closed up almost instantaneously." The blow from the pistol fractured Wershe's eye socket. Wershe continued: "I had on a solid gold chain. They grabbed me by that, they stomped me."

Next, the two officers grabbed Wershe again by the chain around his neck. "Then they threw me over the fence by my neck," Wershe says. "Instead of opening the gate and pushing me through the gate, they picked me up handcuffed and threw me over the fence."

The officers drove Wershe to the Ninth Precinct police station. The shift commander took one look at Wershe and Wershe remembers the precinct commander berated the officers for bringing him to the precinct house. Wershe was transported by ambulance to Detroit Receiving Hospital where he was treated for his beating injuries at the hands of the police. Wershe remembers the damage to his eye socket was so severe he had vision problems for a time.

I asked Wershe what prompted his sometime weed-smoking police pal and the other cop to beat the hell out of him.

"He claims he didn’t mean to hit me," Wershe says. After he got out of the hospital Wershe says Todd Reliford, a friend, took him to meet officer Grandison at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. This is the same officer Grandison who lied at trial and said he didn’t know Rick Wershe. 

Wershe remembers the conversation: “I said, ‘Are f**king crazy?’ He goes, 'Aw man I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. I was just trying to make it look good.' I said, ‘Make what look good, man?’"

Wershe says the police beating was unprovoked. Wershe was street savvy enough to know better than to resist arrest.

"I was in f**king handcuffs," Wershe notes. "And once he (Grandison) started (the pistol whipping and stomping), all the other cops joined in."

Wershe was not charged with resisting arrest or interfering with a police officer. As far as Wershe knows, none of the police officers were ever disciplined or charged for the beating he took that night.

  


Sunday, April 3, 2016

Rick Wershe is serving life for a shaky and shady drug conviction -Pt. 2

Several past Informant America blog posts have suggested the case that sent Richard J. Wershe, Jr. to prison for life was questionable at best. He was arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver over 650 grams of cocaine. The police case had gaping holes in it. But the prosecution’s case was helped by Wershe’s own defense team, two lawyers loyal to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. Those lawyers, both deceased, are now believed to have been intent on ensuring Wershe went to prison for a long, long time as part of a vendetta against Wershe for working as a confidential informant against drug dealers and police corruption. It is enlightening—and disturbing—to take a hard look at the evidence—or lack of it—behind Rick Wershe’s life prison term.

Rick Wershe in court last September (Brian Kauffman, Detroit Free Press)


***

Before we continue to explore the dubious elements of the case that has put Richard J. Wershe, Jr. in prison for over 28 years, we should note a couple of news items from the past week.

He got more bad news, this time from the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids. Wershe has a civil rights lawsuit in that court claiming the Michigan Parole Board violated his constitutional rights in the handling of his petitions for parole.

U.S. District Court judge Gordon Quist initially tossed the case but the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals sent it back to him for a more thorough evaluation. Last week, after a review of the case law by a federal magistrate, Judge Quist again denied the claims in the Wershe lawsuit. The case may go back to the Court of Appeals for additional appeal issues.

***

Also last week, the Detroit Police Department finally got out from under federal oversight after 13 years—13 years—of monitoring for chronic “unconstitutional” policing. Among the issues: abuse of potential witnesses. This is worth noting here because at least two witnesses from Rick Wershe’s case claim they were intimidated by Detroit Police narcs, and in one case, one of the witnesses says he was roughed up by police officers to emphasize the importance of testifying the way the police wanted him to in the Wershe case.

***
PART TWO

Last week’s blog post explored discrepancies and inconsistencies in the police case against Rick Wershe which sent him to prison for life for possession of over eight pounds of cocaine. Among the items noted in last week’s blog:

At the end of Rick Wershe’s preliminary exam on charges of possession with intent to distribute over 650 grams of cocaine, we are left with the following facts which raise a lot of questions:

  • Rick Wershe and a pal are stopped by the police on a pretext traffic stop near his home.
  • Wershe had a shopping bag of cash but no drugs. His sister grabs the bag before the police can and she runs into her house with the cash.
  • A curious crowd spills into the street along with dozens of cops.
  • Rick Wershe walks away empty-handed.
  • A teenage neighbor claims she saw Wershe walking between houses toward her house carrying a large box.
  • The neighbor claims Wershe asked her to put the box behind her house. She said no.
  • A second neighbor, who lives next door to the teen witness said he saw Wershe at the same time as the teen, but he testified Wershe wasn’t carrying a box.
  • After Wershe leaves with the police the neighbors search the back yard for a box and they find one. The box is taken in to the teen girl’s house. A neighbor/witness said the box was taped shut.
  • About two hours later, acting on a mysterious anonymous phone tip, the police arrive and take the box. The officer who took possession of the box says it was partially open when he took control of the box.


What does Rick Wershe say happened that night? I asked him.

To begin with, Wershe has never denied he was moving large quantities of cocaine in his effort to become a “weight man” or wholesaler in the drug trade.

“The box of dope had arrived that day, a few hours before (the pretext traffic stop that started the chain of events)”, Wershe said. Wershe believes his friend and associate Anthony McGee stashed it in his father’s house, which was in the same neighborhood as the Wershe family residence.

“McGee and Steve Rousell (another friend) were the only ones who touched the box,” Wershe insists. “One of them may have moved it thinking a raid was coming down. I was told (sometime later) it was in a dumpster.”

Wershe wonders if the uncle of a neighbor the next block over may have seen the box being stashed in a dumpster and decided to check it out for himself. The neighbor’s uncle’s name was Moosey Norris, a low-level crack dealer, no deceased. Wershe describes him as a “street type” who was half dope dealer, half addict.

After the traffic stop turned to chaos Wershe slipped away. He says he walked between the house from Hampshire Street to Camden St., the next block over.

Wershe agrees with witnesses that he walked between the houses from Hampshire, his street,  to Camden, which is the next block after the chaotic police traffic stop. One witness claimed Wershhe had a box in his hands. Another witness claimed he did not. Wershe says he was empty handed and never touched the box containing 8 kilos of cocaine.



As noted previously, there were conflicting eyewitness accounts of whether Wershe ever had the box himself. One witness says yes, another says no. Whatever the truth, the box wound up under a neighbor’s porch on Camden, the next block over from Hampshire St. where Wershe lived and where the police traffic stop occurred.

About two hours later, acting on an “anonymous phone call” to a police precinct station, officers showed up to take possession of the box. Officer Greg Woods, the narc who took control of the box from neighbors later testified the box had been opened when it was handed to him. One of the other narcs involved in the episode that night was Officer Gerard “Mick” Biernacki, a member of the self-proclaimed No Crack Crew and a cop with a reputation among other cops for lying—committing the felony of perjury—on the witness stand. His nickname was Pinocchio after the children’s fable puppet whose nose would grow every time he told a lie.

Rick Wershe has a theory about what happened. “I think Moosey Norris seen them (McGee and Rousell put the box in a dumpster in an alley) and he took the box, because when the box got turned in there was 8 kilos of cocaine but there was 10 kilos of cocaine in the box,” Wershe says. “So either (police officers) Biernacki and Woods stole two keys or Moosey Norris stole two keys but someone stole two keys.”

There was more illegal action that night, including the beating Wershe received at the hands of the police while he was handcuffed and in custody. More on that next week.