On
June 8th, Richard Wershe, Jr. spent over four hours fighting for his
life. He was tested by an Assistant Michigan Attorney General who ignored key
elements in the Wershe story while grilling him at length about other parts.
And for good measure, the media was chided for not finding a bombshell that
turned out to be a dud.
Rick Wershe handled himself pretty well, all things
considered, at his long-awaited hearing before the Michigan Parole Board. A lot
of time was spent asking Wershe about his criminal activities before his
conviction and imprisonment for life for a non-violent drug offense committed
when he was a teen. Wershe is Michigan’s last remaining prison inmate doing
life for a non-violent drug conviction. The Michigan Parole Board is facing two
federal lawsuits over the question of why they are keeping Wershe in prison
when all other inmates similarly charged have been released for time served.
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| Richard J. Wershe, Jr. - hoping the Michigan Parole Board will end his life sentence. (MDOC photo) |
There were some tense moments at the hearing, which will be
explored in this blog post.
In response to questions from Assistant Attorney General
Scott Rothermel, Wershe explained his troubled childhood and how he came to be
recruited by the FBI to become a paid informant against the Curry drug gang,
which dominated the drug trade on Detroit’s east side in the mid-1980s. Wershe
is believed to be the youngest informant ever recruited by the FBI for criminal
investigations.
Over the course of the hearing it became clear that
Rothermel was determined to highlight all of Wershe’s crimes and mistakes and
bad choices. Rothermel was not interested in hearing about all of the help
Wershe provided the FBI. Perhaps that’s because Wershe helped expose corruption
in the so-called criminal justice system of Michigan. To elicit details about
Wershe’s informant work on public corruption would mean Rothermel would have to
shine the spotlight on the graft, corruption and injustice within the system of
which he is a part. Can’t have that, now can we?
Wershe was required to be truthful about every crime and
misdeed brought up in the questioning. He knew and understood that total
honesty was vital to winning parole. That’s why he became agitated when
Rothermel threw him a curve ball.
To understand the curve ball, it’s necessary to offer some
background. After Rick Wershe was sentenced to life in prison in Detroit in
1988, he was approached in Marquette State Prison by FBI Special Agent Herman
Groman, his “handler” when Wershe was working as an informant from the summer
of 1984 until the spring of 1986.
Groman told him the government would get him transferred to
the federal Witness Security program if he would help initiate an FBI
undercover sting operation aimed at prosecuting drug corruption in the Detroit
Police Department. The Witness Security program (WitSec) is a prisoner version
of the Witness Protection program. Certain federal prisons have a special
secure section for convicts who are informants and who have helped the
government make important cases. It’s still prison, but life in the WitSec
units is far better than in regular prison facilities.
Wershe agreed to help the FBI again, and Operation Backbone
was a big success. Close to a dozen police officers were indicted and pled
guilty or were convicted. Operation Backbone also ensnared Willie Clyde Volsan,
the former brother-in-law of Detroit’s late Mayor Coleman Young.
Rick Wershe was transferred to a WitSec unit at federal
prison in Phoenix, Arizona. His time there was unremarkable until he befriended
Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, the Mafia hitman turned informant who
helped bring down John Gotti, the Godfather of Godfathers in the U.S. Mafia.
Gravano found out Rick Wershe’s father was a licensed gun
dealer. Soon, Gravano asked Wershe to help him get some guns that could be used
to murder John Gotti, Jr. for some feud he and Gravano had.
Wershe informed Herm Groman, his longtime FBI handler, about what Gravano was up to. Groman had to report it to Washington. This stirred up a hornet’s nest in Washington
at the FBI and Justice Department. Here was one informant informing on a higher
profile informant, the government’s prize witness against the Mafia.
The FBI/Justice Department investigation of Wershe’s claims
about Gravano got muddled, perhaps deliberately, and the matter ended inconclusively.
But Wershe, for his own safety, had to be transferred. They moved him to
another WitSec unit in a federal prison in Florida.
While there, Wershe got wind of a used car sales scheme
involving guys on the outside and a fellow WitSec inmate named Lorenzo “Fat Cat”
Nichols.
Wershe saw an opportunity to buy used cars in Florida and
ship them to Michigan to be re-sold at a higher price. He says he did it to
help his mother and sister make some money. He also admitted he learned, at
some point, that these were stolen cars.
Wershe was busted along with a number of others involved in
the car scam. One of them was Antonio Ferrer, a car salesman on the outside. When
Ferrer was arrested, he did what millions of criminals do: he told on the
others in hopes of getting a break on his part of the case. It worked. Ferrer
was charged, like Rick Wershe, with Racketeering and Conspiracy to Commit
Racketeering. For singing a song about everyone else in the scheme, Ferrer was sentenced
to probation on both counts. No time served. He did, however, have to pay a
fine for his part in the car scheme.
The Miami-Dade police detective on the car case, Les
Cravens, apparently loved the story Ferrer told him. Cravens wrote up what is
called a probable cause affidavit, laying out all the claims Ferrer made about
the others in the case, including Rick Wershe. Such affidavits routinely list
all the crimes and possible crimes
related to the investigation. It’s like throwing all the allegations against a
wall and seeing which of them stick.
One of Ferrer’s allegations was that Rick Wershe proposed
hiding drugs in the door panels of cars being shipped out of Florida as a means
of smuggling narcotics.
The Florida prosecutor never pursued this allegation
against Rick Wershe. He pled guilty to racketeering and racketeering
conspiracy. But there was nothing—nothing—in the charges against him or in his
court paperwork for the plea agreement that mentioned drugs.
Thus, Rick Wershe was stunned at his June 8th
parole hearing when Assistant Attorney General Rothermel brought it up and
asked him about it. Wershe, getting agitated said, “I never saw that document.”
Rothermel proceeded to quiz Wershe, over and over and over
about Ferrer’s “admission” that he, Wershe, suggested shipping cocaine in the
door panels of cars.
Wershe raised his voice and said, “I never dealt with drugs
in prison.” Rothermel told him to calm down.
The Detroit Free
Press, always willing in past years to smear Rick Wershe as a “drug lord” and
“kingpin” without any evidence to support that libel, had a screaming headline
on its Web site after the hearing that Wershe had a “meltdown”! They got over their own hyperventilating "meltdown" and calmed
down later, posting a more professional headline.
Wershe did not have a meltdown. He didn’t “lose it.” No one
had to restrain him in his seat. Not even close. He did become agitated and
verbally combative about a serious charge he had never heard before. This was
serious stuff. This was his one shot. His parole hearing. And a lawyer for the
state was bringing up something that blindsided Wershe.
The reason he hadn’t heard about it was simple. It was a
document of unsubstantiated allegations from a co-defendant who was angling for
the best deal he could get. And he got a good one. Probation. No jail time. In
the end, the Florida prosecutor apparently concluded there wasn’t enough
evidence to bother with this allegation. That’s why Wershe had never heard it
before. It was an unsupported allegation in a cop’s affidavit to get criminal
charges in a case.
Rothermel showed his real motive, I believe, when he kept
stating, repeatedly, “I found this
document in the Florida court file. I don’t know why no one else did.” Before
long, it became evident his repeated harangue about the document was less about
Rick Wershe and more about tweaking the noses of those of us in the media who have lambasted
the Attorney General’s Office for sloppiness and negligence in the Wershe case.
It was Rothermel’s chance—or so he thought—to get back at the media. “I-I-I” found this, why didn’t anyone
else?”
Well, others, myself included, did find it, but disregarded
it as an unsupported allegation from a guy looking to get a good plea deal. It
happens all the time in law enforcement.
Here’s an excerpt from the probable cause affidavit that
Scott Rothermel mistakenly assumed no one else found but him:
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| Excerpt with highlights from a Florida "Probable Cause" affidavit in Rick Wershe's case in that state. |
If the Parole Board reviews the affidavit and the official record in Rick Wershe’s
Florida case, they will discover that Mr. Rothermel made an ass of himself over
a document with unsupported, unsubstantiated allegations by a criminal looking
to get a good deal.
Since Rothermel made such a big deal about “finding”
documentation in the Wershe case, it’s time to point out the sloppiness and
negligence of his office in a federal lawsuit Wershe has pending against the
Michigan Parole Board for violating his civil rights by refusing to grant him
parole.
The Attorney General of Michigan is the “lawyer” for the
Michigan Parole Board, so the AG’s office is litigating Wershe’s civil rights
case.
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the Michigan Attorney
General’s office claimed—falsely—that Rick Wershe, the plaintiff, had been
convicted in federal court for possession of gun silencers. They got it wrong, plain and simple.
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| The Michigan Attorney General's Office has been so determined to find dirt on Richard J. Wershe, Jr. that they cited to a federal court a gun silencer case they attributed to Rick Wershe. If they had done thorough and accurate legal work they would have noticed the case involved his father, Richard J. Wershe, Sr. and not Richard J. Wershe, Sr. His prison file is full of these kinds of sloppy criminal justice "fact" assertions and it has cost him all of his adult life behind bars. |
If the Attorney General’s Office had done what lawyers call due diligence
they would have discovered that case involved Rick Wershe’s father—Richard Wershe,
SR—and not Richard Wershe, JR. There IS a federal case about gun silencers against a defendant named Richard Wershe, but the Michigan Attorney General got it wrong. They cited the wrong person. The wrong defendant. There is no evidence they have done anything to correct their mistake. Apparently they have a hard time admitting mistakes.
Note to Scott Rothermel: I found this, why didn’t your office? “I-I-I” found this. Why was the Attorney General’s office so sloppy
and negligent that you couldn’t find it?
The difference between Rothermel’s big show at the Parole
Hearing over the unsubstantiated Probable Cause affidavit that HE found in Florida and what I
just pointed out is substantial. Did I mention HE found it? He told us that over and over at the parole hearing. Another note to Scott Rothermel: Good for you! Way to go! Attaboy! Give yourself a gold star.
The error by the Attorney General’s Office in
the Wershe civil suit is real, it is factual, it is in the court record. The
co-defendant’s claim in Florida about Wershe conspiring to smuggle drugs in the door
panels of cars, is not.
Rick Wershe can only hope the Michigan Parole Board can
distinguish between Scott Rothermel’s showboating about an irrelevant document—and fact.
The next step in the Wershe parole process is for a stenographer to type up the entire four hours of his parole hearing. Copies of the transcript will be given to the full 10-member Parole Board and they will vote, in July or August, on whether to grant him parole. Six of the 10 members must vote to grant parole.
