Judge Declares Wershe Prison Sentence Unconstitutional; Battle Looms over Re-Sentencing

The clock is ticking on a Detroit judge's decision to re-sentence Richard Wershe, Jr., calling his life prison term unconstitutional. The prosecutor's office intends to fight it as they've always done. 

Clad in a green prisoner jumpsuit, he walked quickly to the defense table from the prisoner bullpen next to the courtroom. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone. It seemed like he was keeping his shaved head down, trying as best he could to maintain a low profile even though he was the center of attention. Spending your entire adult life in prison will do that to a man.

Rick Wershe, Jr. was back in court last week with new hope for release from prison.
(Photo: David Coates, Detroit News)

Richard J. Wershe, Jr. was in the courtroom of Wayne County Circuit Court judge Dana M. Hathaway last Friday morning for a brief but important appearance. Judge Hathaway is inclined to give Wershe a reason to hold his head up. Wershe was brought back to Detroit from a prison in western Michigan on her order so he could hear her written legal opinion that he should be re-sentenced on his life in prison term. She didn’t say so but she gave every indication she wants to re-sentence him to time served. In other words, she thinks it’s time to end the injustice that has been inflicted on the man the public came to know as White Boy Rick. Judge Hathaway stated flatly in her opinion “This court finds that Defendant’s original sentence was unconstitutional.” 

The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office objected. The judge was asked to “stay” her plan to re-sentence Wershe on September 18. The request was denied. An assistant prosecutor said they would appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals and ask the appellate court to halt the process.  

Judge Hathaway took over Wershe’s case when his trial and sentencing judge, Thomas Jackson, retired. It is clear she has reviewed his case and she is struck by the fact Wershe was 17 when the crime was committed and 18 when he was sentenced to life in prison for a non-violent drug case.

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dana M. Hathaway on the bench last Friday announcing she intends to re-sentence Wershe from his life prison term.
(Photo: Al Lengel, Deadline Detroit)

Judge Hathaway noted in her opinion “this juvenile defendant has been punished more severely than he could have been for first degree murder, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery or other exceptionally grave and violent crimes. This lends additional support to the argument that defendant’s sentence is disproportionate.” The Michigan Supreme Court has made a point of “proportionality” which means let the punishment fit the crime.

This judge clearly gets the point that the punishment of Richard J. Wershe, Jr. is all out of proportion to prevailing standards in criminal justice. “If Defendant were to be resentenced today for the crime he committed in 1987, his potential (sentencing) guidelines in this case are as low as 42-70 months,“ the judge wrote.

Without going in to more detail here, it should be noted Judge Hathaway is critical in her opinion of the way the Michigan Parole Board does its job.

It’s been years since Richard J. Wershe, Jr. was in a courtroom. It’s true that Wershe had tried to become a player in the cocaine trade. It is a dirty business but it was the only business he knew. Cops on a Detroit federal drug task force had taught him the dope trade after they recruited him—at age 14—to become an undercover paid informant against the Curry Brothers, a major, politically-connected drug gang.

To this day, many Detroit reporters still can’t get it right. They insist on calling him a drug-dealer-turned-informant. They’ve got it exactly wrong. Rick Wershe was an informant-turned- dope-dealer. There is a BIG difference.

Most police informants turn to snitching to get out of trouble. With Rick Wershe, Jr. it was just the opposite. Rick Wershe wasn’t in trouble. He was 14. And he was known to a family of dope dealers because they lived in the same neighborhood. He became a police drug informant because FBI agents and Detroit police officers asked this middle school kid to play undercover agent and help them prosecute a bunch of bad guys. What teenage kid would turn that down?

The other side of Rick’s story that doesn’t get reported by skim-the-surface reporters is how law enforcement kicked Wershe to the curb to fend for himself after they got what they needed from him in the Curry case.

Wershe had dropped out of school to live the fast life of a drug world informant. The FBI had given Rick cash to enable him to be a player. Wershe admits he was dazzled by the fancy cars, the designer clothes, the hot women.

Suddenly it was all gone. He had nowhere to turn. His parents were divorced. His father was in and out of trouble. Richard Wershe, Sr. had become an FBI informant himself as a hedge against going to jail. It was Rick’s dad who introduced him to a pair of FBI agents who were intrigued that the kid was familiar with the Curry Brothers who were targeted by the federal drug task force for prosecution. Rick’s sister had become a drug addict. So when the excellent adventure as a paid FBI informant ended, young Rick Wershe turned to the trade the police had taught him. He set out to become a “weight man”, a wholesale-level dope dealer. He didn’t have a gang. He didn’t operate crack houses. He scored coke from a guy he had met in Miami. Rick Wershe barely got started when the police busted him in a case that carried a life sentence under a harsh Michigan law that has since been discarded.

When Rick Wershe Jr. was living the life of a recruited-informant-turned-dope-dealer, the late John O’Hair was the Wayne County prosecutor. O’Hair was a bit of a stuffed shirt straight arrow, but he also was an elected official. O’Hair, like prosecutors everywhere, wanted to appear tough on crime to the voters.

O’Hair was not happy to see the feds take over the “war on drugs” because that meant he was cut out of the prosecutorial glory.

When Rick Wershe tried his hand at being a cocaine wholesaler and got caught, O’Hair was only too happy to prosecute a “kingpin” and “drug lord” even if this supposed drug baron was just a 17-year old white kid trying to be a big shot in the deadly black underworld.

After the young man the media loved to call White Boy Rick was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, word eventually got back to O’Hair and his team that Rick Wershe, Jr. had first-hand knowledge of drug payoffs to a Detroit police narcotics sergeant who O’Hair wanted to prosecute in the worst way. The sergeant had caused the prosecutor’s office a lot of grief.

O’Hair sent one of his assistants, the late Patrick Foley, to meet with Wershe in prison. Foley was a veteran assistant prosecutor experienced in drug and organized crime cases.

Foley met with Wershe and his attorney, the late Bill Bufalino II, after Rick's conviction, to hear firsthand what he knew about the dirty cop.

Rick recently told me he had paid the sergeant to avoid drug raids. Rick says the sergeant soon wanted larger payoffs. Wershe balked and the next thing he knew Detroit Police narcs and a couple of DEA agents known as the “No Crack Crew” were on his back almost constantly.

In the prison meeting Rick asked Foley what he, Foley, was offering him on his life prison sentence if he helped prosecute the dirty narcotics sergeant. Foley told Wershe the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office was offering nothing. They “might” consider asking for a sentence reduction for him after Rick went the full distance in helping nail the corrupt cop. Rick told Foley to go pound sand or words to that effect.

O’Hair was said to be livid. This kid had helped the FBI and U.S. Attorney make a big drug case—the successful prosecution of the Curry Brothers drug gang. Yet he wouldn’t help the prosecutor who had just sent him to prison for life, unless the prosecutor offered him something in return.

It should be noted and underlined that the Wayne County Prosecutor—like other prosecutors around the country—routinely makes deals with criminals in exchange for cooperation and testimony in prosecutions. It’s the way the U.S. criminal justice system works. O’Hair did it. His successor Mike Duggan did it. (Duggan is now the mayor of the City of Detroit.) Kym Worthy, the current prosecutor has done it and continues to make deals to this day. Fact: the nation’s prisons would be nearly empty if it weren’t for ‘Let’s Make A Deal.’

Nevertheless, O’Hair was having none of it with White Boy Rick, his big marquee drug conviction. If this punk wouldn’t help prosecute a corrupt cop without a deal on his life sentence, then Wershe forever would be a marked man with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

But O’Hair’s time was long ago. Has the vendetta really stuck over all these years? You bet it has. And since O’Hair’s time new reasons emerged to supposedly justify a prosecutorial grudge against White Boy Rick.  The tale of what happened in the Wershe case since the O’Hair era is eye-popping. It will be told on Informant America in future posts.

Why Rick Wershe, Jr. Is Ready For A Second Chance

A Wayne County, Michigan Circuit Court judge may soon consider re-sentencing Richard Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—who has been serving a life prison sentence and who has been turned down repeatedly for parole, even though he was never charged with a violent crime. He deserves a second chance. Here are some reasons why.

A couple of emails this past week from a man who means well but is clearly uninformed about all of the facts of the case of Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—aka—White Boy Rick, has prompted me to write about a post about the Rick Wershe of today as opposed to the Rick Wershe of the 1980s.

The emailer writes, and I’m condensing here, that Rick needs to be contrite and admit his mistakes. He needs to be less defiant. What the writer doesn’t know is that Rick has done that—more than once, whenever the opportunity arises. He has submitted an affidavit to the Michigan Parole Board admitting his guilt. He testified to the Parole Board in 2003 that he was involved in the drug trade and he knows he did wrong by getting involved. Rick Wershe also told the Parole Board this:

“Since the time I’ve come to prison, sir, all I’ve tried to do is better myself. The judge said I should get a GED. I did that. I took college (courses). I’ve never tried to escape anything. I never ran from anything. I made every court date I ever had scheduled. I’ve never tried to escape from prison or anything…I’ve never been in trouble the whole time I was in the Michigan State Prison system.”

In that same 2003 Parole Board hearing Rick Wershe said: “Yes, I knew a lot of bad people. I’m not going to deny that and I didn’t hang around choir boys or none of that. That wasn’t the neighborhood I grew up in.”

He’s quite right about that. Dave Majkowski, one of Rick’s lifelong friends, says the only reason he escaped the life of crime his pal Rick sank into is because he and his family moved to the suburbs. Rick and his family did not.

Rick took issue at the 2003 hearing and he takes issue today with those who try to paint him as a “drug lord” and cocaine “kingpin” The thing is, FBI agents who are deeply familiar with Wershe agree. He was never a major dope dealer. Yet there are some in Detroit law enforcement who persist in perpetuating that lie.

It can never be said often enough that part of Rick Wershe’s problem is that he helped the FBI prosecute major drug dealers and corrupt cops. He cost these criminals a lot of money and they and their friends are doing their damnedest to keep him in prison until he dies, as payback.

But as Informant America has noted several times, it wasn’t Rick’s choice to get in the drug trade in the first place. Agents and police officers in a federal drug task force in Detroit recruited him—at age 14—to get involved with drugs so he could inform on some dope dealers he knew from the neighborhood.

As previous blog posts have explained, when the cops got what they needed they kicked this kid to the curb. They dropped him, apparently with no thought of helping him try to become a somewhat normal teenager again after paying him and encouraging him to live on the wild side to help them make a case.

Since this past March Informant America has explored and exposed in considerable detail the lies, exaggerations and distortions that are the basis of the legend of White Boy Rick, alleged white teenage wunderkind of Detroit’s mostly black cocaine trade in the 1980s.

Anyone who thinks or says Rick Wershe is defiant about admitting his past is just plain wrong. These blog posts are defiant toward law enforcement wrongdoing in his case, but Rick doesn’t write these posts. I do.

Rick has been extremely helpful even though he is understandably sick of talking about his past. That stuff happened before he was 18. He’s a grown man now. He’s considerate, frequently asking how my family is doing. He has good manners and a good supply of common sense; something he lacked in the White Boy Rick days.

“Reliving the past is a painful thing all these years later!” Rick told me in an email from prison regarding my endless questions about the details of what happened back then.

I’ve asked him to review many law enforcement investigative files about himself. Past posts on Informant America have shown those files often contain errors, inaccuracies and outright lies.

“I have to be honest. My blood pressure shoots up doing that (file reviews). All the lies really piss me off and it wears me out mentally, Vince!”

I keep asking Rick for details not to force him to relive unpleasant memories but to demolish the myth that clouds his name. It’s not enough to get a parole. He has that ‘White Boy Rick’ albatross around his neck to this day. His legend is built on too many law enforcement lies and someone needs to expose the truth as best it can be reconstructed.

Rick Wershe Jr. with some of his art. The Michigan Dept. of Corrections restricts photos of inmates. If they want to encourage inmates they should allow photos of them when they are doing positive things to turn their lives around.
(Photo from Dave Majkowski on the Free Richard Wershe Jr. Facebook page.)

Today Rick Wershe concentrates on his art work; one of his serious hobbies while he sits in prison waiting for a parole, a gubernatorial pardon or some break after doing nearly 30 years for a non-violent crime. He’s had some potentially life-threatening health problems, too. Still he gets up and faces each day as it comes. He harbors hope that a potential movie about his life will tell the truth.

Wershe got his GED high school diploma equivalent long ago. He’s taken all the return-to-life-on-the-outside courses the prison system has to offer.

When I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request asking for copies of Rick Wershe’s prison discipline record, my request was denied—because he doesn’t HAVE an inmate discipline file. Eric Smith, the assistant to the warden at the Oaks Correctional Facility where Rick is doing his time, told me Rick Wershe is close to being a so-called model prisoner. He has no misconduct marks on his record.

Rick Wershe the man is not Rick Wershe the teenager. When he became an adult he changed, just like the rest of us. All he wants is a chance to have a life. He’s always loved cars and he hopes to get in to the car business in some way in another state when he finally wins his freedom.

But there are people who don’t want to hear anything about how Rick Wershe has matured and tried to better himself. When he organized, from prison, a holiday food drive for the needy, he was criticized by some. These are people who want the public to believe he is a menace to society, which he is not.

One idiot on the Parole Board who thinks Rick should remain in prison until he dies said Rick Wershe doesn’t have friends on the outside, that his only friends are criminals. Gee! Do ya think? You put a man in prison with convicted criminals for his entire adult life and yet you somehow expect him to have a network of good-citizen friends on the outside? How stupid can you be? Don’t answer that. We already know.

New Hope for White Boy Rick

Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—at last has some real hope to get his life sentence for dealing drugs overturned. This important confidential FBI informant was sentenced in 1988 under a now-discarded Michigan law mandating life in prison for possession of a large quantity of illegal drugs, even though he wasn’t associated with any drug violence. A recent Michigan Supreme Court decision eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing and Wershe’s new case judge is willing to consider re-sentencing him in light of the high court ruling. The Wayne County Prosecutor has a fresh opportunity to stand up for justice in his case.

“Facts matter.”

Kym Worthy said that. She’s the prosecutor for Wayne County, Michigan. She said it at a recent news conference where she announced her office had exonerated a federal agent who had killed a fugitive during a raid. The dead man and the federal agent were both black.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy
Photo: Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press

“Credible facts matter. Supportable evidence matters. Provable evidence matters. Doing justice matters and the truth matters," Worthy told reporters.

Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—aka White Boy Rick—can only hope she meant what she said about facts and truth. If she does, she will not oppose a court motion filed by Wershe’s appeals attorney to have his life sentence overturned and be given a new sentence to time-served. The judge in Wershe’s case has given the prosecutor until early October to file a written response. If she opposes re-sentencing Wershe a full court hearing is likely. It’s possible Rick Wershe’s lifelong nightmare might be over by the holidays. More about that in a moment.

Prosecutor Worthy’s predecessors have steadfastly opposed parole or gubernatorial commutation for Wershe on the very dubious grounds that he was and remains a menace to society. Wershe is, quite frankly, the victim of a lie-infested smear campaign by some in law enforcement. He’s been labeled as a “kingpin” and “drug lord” and a gangster who is “worse than a mass murderer” without any “credible facts”, without any “supportable evidence”, without any “provable evidence” and without any “justice” or “truth.” The words and terms in quotations in the previous sentence were borrowed from Wayne County Prosecutor Worthy’s recent observations about the importance of such things.

Truth? Justice? Supportable, provable evidence? Here’s some. Richard J. Wershe Jr., who is serving life for dealing drugs, was recruited at age 14 by federal agents to become a confidential informant against the Curry Brothers, a politically-connected drug gang operating on Detroit’s east side during the 1980s. Rick Wershe didn’t seek out a life of crime. Law enforcement lured him in to it to help them make a big case. Over the years he passed along to the FBI good information about police corruption in the Detroit Police Department. When the federal agents and Detroit police officers of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) had no further use of their teenaged informant they cast him aside to fend for himself. So he tried to become a cocaine wholesaler on his own. He was quickly caught by the Detroit Police. He was 17-years old. He had been living an underworld life unknown to most teenagers. He was cocky and arrogant and full of himself. In other words, he was an immature kid. He’s now a middle-aged man who has spent his entire adult life behind bars for a non-violent crime he committed as a juvenile. 

True mass murderers—Detroit drug underworld hitmen—have been sent to prison and released on parole in the time Wershe has spent locked up. Prosecutors have not opposed the release of these killers but they have opposed the release of Rick Wershe. Why?

Wershe’s attorney, Ralph Musilli, a lawyer never at a loss for words, calls his client a “child warrior in the War on Drugs.” Bombast aside, Musilli is right.

Wershe, the teenager recruited to become an informant, passed along vital tips to the Detroit federal drug task force about dealers and cops-on-the-take. This cost a lot of people a lot of money. Those people have friends, political friends, in the Detroit/Wayne County criminal justice establishment; cops, assistant prosecutors, judges and, of course, criminal defense attorneys with deep pockets that can assist, and influence, people running for local election.

There appears to be a loosely organized but quite effective vendetta against Wershe for telling the FBI about drug dealing and corruption in Detroit. How else to explain why he is the last prison inmate still doing time under a harsh mandatory-life Michigan law that was abolished years ago?

In late July a Michigan Supreme Court ruling struck down portions of state law dealing with criminal sentencing guidelines. A big part of that ruling abolished the use of mandatory minimum sentencing in the guidelines used by court judges. When Rick Wershe was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Detroit Recorder’s Court trial judge Thomas Jackson, now retired, was following the established sentencing guidelines. Another Michigan Supreme Court ruling allowed Judge Jackson to amend Wershe’s sentence to life with the possibility of parole instead of life without parole. The judge amended Rick Wershe’s sentence to include the possibility of parole but the mandatory minimum of life remained in effect. The recent Michigan Supreme Court ruling appears to have changed that.

Musilli, Rick Wershe’s longtime appeals attorney, lost no time in filing a motion for re-sentencing before Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dana Hathaway, who now has Wershe’s case among the cases on her docket.

“This is huge,” Musilli says. “This will be the first hearing we’ve ever had.” What he means is this will be the first court hearing Wershe has had since he was sentenced in 1988. Wershe had a hearing before the Michigan Parole Board in 2003 but that was more like a kangaroo court, a go-through-the-motions charade where the decision was already made to keep Wershe in prison. This time Musilli is optimistic. “We have (the) law on our side and we have a judge willing to listen to it.” He also has considerable facts and evidence on his side, too.

Here’s a list of credible, supportable, provable facts in the Rick Wershe case:

• Wershe was recruited at age 14 by FBI agents to infiltrate a major drug gang
• Wershe performed his undercover role well, enabling agents to get wiretap authorization
• Wershe was cast aside when the federal task force no longer needed him
• Wershe, around 16, turned to the life law enforcement had introduced him to; he tried to become a dope wholesaler, a “weight man”
• Wershe was arrested by the Detroit Police before he ever became an established drug trafficker
• Wershe was never involved in drug violence
• Wershe never had a drug gang or organization
• Wershe never operated cocaine crack houses
• Wershe continued to help the FBI from prison, enabling them to prosecute corrupt police officers who were aiding drug traffickers
• Wershe helped the FBI, from prison, disrupt two murder plots
• Wershe was never charged with conspiracy, a charge used against someone who is an alleged drug “lord”
• Wershe was never charged with racketeering, a charge used against alleged drug gangsters
• Wershe was never charged with operating a continuing criminal enterprise, a federal law commonly known as the “kingpin” statute

If Prosecutor Worthy is smart—and she is—she will recognize that opposing a sentence reduction for White Boy Rick is a losing hand. To use her own words: “Credible facts matter. Supportable evidence matters. Provable evidence matters.”

She has none of those things if she goes to court and opposes a sentence reduction for a man serving life in prison after helping law enforcement rid Detroit of some of the infection that came with the reign of a group of 1980s drug dealers and their corrupt friends in the police department. All she has against Wershe is an unprovable reputation that has become an accepted local legend.

Prosecutor Worthy can truthfully say she can’t speak for what her predecessors did in the past, but this is now and her review of the Wershe case doesn’t support his continued imprisonment.

She can even reprise what she said to reporters in mid-August: “Doing justice matters and the truth matters."

. 

Did a DEA agent mislead the Parole Board about White Boy Rick?

The Michigan Parole Board should take a very hard look at the “evidence” some law enforcement personnel presented to them at Richard Wershe, Jr.’s 2003 parole hearing. A thorough impartial review would show the “evidence” against White Boy Rick was shaky, at best. They can begin with a close examination of the testimony and “evidence” of former-now-retired DEA Special Agent Richard Crock.

He knew. Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Richard Crock knew the information in a DEA informant debriefing that he gave the Michigan Parole Board purporting to show a connection between lifer Richard J. Wershe, Jr. and the infamous Chambers Brothers Detroit drug gang came from an informant who was such an outrageous and prodigious liar that the federal government—Crock’s own team—indicted, tried, convicted and sent informant Terry Coleman to prison for lying; lying to a federal grand jury, lying on the witness stand at trial, lying about the Chambers Brothers drug empire.

Colbert told William Adler, author of Land of Opportunity, a book about the rise and fall of the Chambers Brothers drug operation that he was smoking substantial amounts of crack cocaine when he became a police informant. “I was smoking so much (crack) that whatever bullshit the cops asked me, I said yes this, no that. Whatever they wanted,” Colbert told author Adler.

Last week’s blog explained how Special Agent Crock went before the Michigan Parole Board in 2003 and presented “exhibits” purporting to make the case that Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—who was up for parole—should remain in prison and continue his life sentence because he was, in fact, the “drug lord” and “kingpin” that the gullible Detroit media had made him out to be before his trial and conviction.

Crock’s “Exhibit # 1” was the debriefing of Terry Colbert, the star snitch against the Chambers Brothers.

Agent Crock’s written memo to the Michigan Parole Board stated, “The Chambers Brothers were responsible for the vast majority of “crack” cocaine being distributed in Detroit.”

To drive home the point of how big and important the Chambers Brothers organization was in the Detroit drug underworld, Crock’s written statement to the Parole Board said, “…by witness accounts at the time (the Chambers Brothers were) responsible for distribution from well over 1,000 locations.”

Yikes! Anyone associated with the Chambers Brothers must be a bad hombre.

“As part of the Chambers case, the task force identified a number of cocaine suppliers for the organization, to include Richard Wershe, Jr., a.k.a. “White Boy Rick,” Crock explained. His written statement to the Parole Board went on:

“Substantiated information indicated Wershe supplied kilogram quantities of cocaine and firearms to the Chambers group. During 1987 Richard Wershe Jr. was regarded as one of the premier drug traffickers in the Detroit area. (Attachment 1)”

Attachment 1? You mean the DEA debriefing of informant Terry Colbert who went to prison for the maximum term allowed under the law for repeatedly lying to the grand jury and the trial jury in the Chambers Brothers trial? Attachment (Exhibit) 1? That’s your best evidence that Richard J. Wershe, Jr was a “premier” drug trafficker???

We can rest assured that if Special Agent Crock had any stronger evidence to show Richard Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—was a drug kingpin, that he was a supplier to the Chambers Brothers, he would have handed it over to the Parole Board at that hearing. But Attachment/Exhibit 1 was apparently the best he had. He submitted other exhibit/attachments and we will explore some of them at another time.

Let’s go back to last week’s blog post and review what convicted liar Terry Colbert said about Rick Wershe in that debriefing about the Chambers Brothers drug ring. Note that law enforcement reports frequently put last names in all caps to make them easy to spot on a page.

That six page DEA investigative report of the Terry Colbert debriefing mentions Rick Wershe exactly one time—and it had nothing to do with drugs. On page three it states: “Also during the summer of 1986 Jerry GANT purchased firearms for the B.J. Chambers organization from Rick WERSHE. Most of the firearms were uzzis (sic) and 9mm pistols.”

That’s it. That is the only mention in Attachment/Exhibit 1 of Rick Wershe and the Chambers Brothers organization. Yet Special Agent Crock presented this flimsy piece of information to the Michigan Parole Board as proof Richard Wershe, Jr. was one of the premier cocaine traffickers in Detroit in that era.

Another fact worth noting; at the Chambers Brothers federal drug trafficking trial in Detroit prosecutors showed the jury an organizational flow chart, including the sources of supply to the massive drug ring. There were two names listed as suppliers: Perry Coleman and Kevin Duplessis. Rick Wershe, Jr.’s name wasn’t there. His name wasn’t on the Chambers Brothers organizational chart prosecutors showed the jury. He wasn’t even mentioned in the trial.

Nevertheless, years later in 2003, DEA Agent Crock told the Michigan Parole Board that Rick Wershe, Jr. was a supplier to the Chambers Brothers in keeping with his status as one of the “premier” drug traffickers in the Detroit area.

What’s wrong with this picture? Why would a DEA agent present the statement of a convicted liar to the Michigan Parole Board as evidence that Rick Wershe should stay in jail until he dies? Why didn’t he present the Chambers Brothers organization chart federal prosecutors used at the trial, the one that DIDN’T show Rick Wershe as a supplier to the organization? Why didn’t he tell the Parole Board Terry Colbert, the source of information for his Exhibit # 1, is a convicted liar?

Court documents show the so-called “No Crack Crew” of Detroit cops and DEA agents, of which Crock was a leading member, used Colbert as the confidential source to obtain court-sanctioned search warrants over 75% of the time in the 101 search warrants executed in the Chambers Brothers investigation.

Yet Colbert proved to be such a chronic and consistent liar that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit—the federal prosecutor’s office—indicted him for perjury—and won the case. What’s more, the judge gave Colbert the maximum sentence under the law. And a federal appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence.

In last week’s post I wrote, “Crock had to know Terry Colbert had gone to prison for lying to the federal government in the Chambers Brothers investigation. He was Crock’s informant!”

This week the term “had to know” is being replaced by the term “did know.” DEA Agent Crock, when he submitted “Exhibit # 1” against Rick Wershe’s parole, definitely knew he was providing the board with information from a man who was convicted and sentenced to prison for lying—in the Chambers Brothers drug investigation.

Upon further investigation, it can be reported that Special Agent Crock submitted an investigative report (known as a DEA-6 in agency parlance) specifically noting for the record that Colbert was sent to jail for being a liar.

In an August 1, 1991 report Crock wrote for the DEA’s Chambers Brothers investigative file, he stated: “On July 31, 1991 Terry COLBERT was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Gadolla (Crock misspelled of the name of U.S. District Court judge Paul Gadola, now deceased.), Eastern District of Michigan, subsequent to his conviction on eight counts of perjury. (Emphasis added.)

Without a trace of irony, Crock’s report went on: “COLBERT was a DEA Cooperating individual, SI7—87—0030, who provided substantial information, grand jury and trial testimony against the notorious CHAMBERS Brothers “CRACK” Cocaine Organization. Previously, COLBERT was a trusted lieutenant and childhood friend of the Chambers Brothers.”

Jeez, dude! In the previous sentence of your report you just said Colbert was sentenced to prison on eight counts of perjury. Then you turn around in the next sentence and note this convicted liar provided “substantial information” in the Chambers Brothers case. Hmm. Which part was true and which part was a lie? Or do you know?

Well. In any event there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Special Agent Crock knew Terry Colbert had been sent to prison for lying in the Chambers Brothers case when he submitted the DEA Colbert debriefing as “Exhibit # 1” in his presentation to the Michigan Parole Board as to why Rick Wershe should remain behind bars instead of being paroled.

Why? Why did he do it? THAT is an excellent question—one someone on the Michigan Parole Board should ask because it’s obvious Special Agent Crock’s “Exhibit # 1” against Rick Wershe, as presented to the Parole Board, was highly misleading to put it charitably.

For those who missed last week’s blog post {“Rick Wershe and the DEA’s Informant Problem”), it was noted that the ONLY reference to “Rick Wershe” in the Colbert debriefing was that a Chambers Brothers operative named Jerry Gant bought some guns from “Rick Wershe.” The problem with that is, there were two Rick Wershes; Junior and Senior. The late Richard “Rick” Wershe Sr. was a licensed gun dealer and wheeler-dealer who was frequently on the edge when it came to obeying the law. So did Gant buy guns from Rick Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—or did he buy them from the junior Wershe’s father? We don’t know and apparently the DEA didn’t know, either. There’s no evidence Crock and his crew bothered to investigate further.

I sent Rick Wershe an email asking about this 'gun' business. "I never sold BJ any guns," was Rick's reply. BJ - Billy Joe Chambers - was the driving force behind the Chambers Brothers drug operation. 

By presenting an official DEA investigative report to the Parole Board where a confidential informant (Colbert) mentions “Rick Wershe” in connection with the infamous Chambers Brothers, this seemingly connects Wershe to the Chambers Brothers—if you’re not paying close attention. In other words, it tars Richard J. Wershe, Jr. with the Chambers Brothers brush. Thus, to a casual reader of “Exhibit # 1” Wershe must be associated with the Chambers Brothers, right?  It is guilt by association, but the association is tenuous, at best, and highly questionable as to which “Rick Wershe” the snitch is talking about.

Here are three things we know:

1. Rick Wershe, Jr. was recruited by the FBI as a drug informant for a federal drug task force which included the DEA. The Detroit DEA had access through the task force to Wershe Jr.’s work as an FBI informant.
2. Many in the DEA harbored deep resentment that Congress had given the FBI authority to investigate drug cases shortly before the Detroit federal drug task force was formed. There have been more than a few turf wars between the two federal agencies. So if an FBI informant gets burned at a parole hearing, it doesn’t matter much to some guys in the DEA.
3. Rick Wershe, Jr. helped the FBI convict some politically connected Detroit cops in a corruption sting operation. These dirty cops had friends in the department. Were some of their friends on the No Crack Crew of Detroit cops and DEA agents? Only the No Crack Crew knows the answer to that one.

Terry Colbert (Kentucky Dept. of Corrections photo)

What about Terry Colbert, the convicted liar/informant who mentioned Rick Wershe’s name to the DEA agents? What happened to him?

Well, he’s back in prison—again. This time he’s doing time in Kentucky on another drug case. Colbert is in for 11 years for peddling prescription drugs.

I reached out to him via email and asked if he would clarify which Wershe supposedly sold guns to Jerry Gant of the Chambers drug crew.

His emailed response:

“What’s in it for me?”

My email reply explained legitimate reporters don’t pay for interviews and what’s in it for him is the chance to set the record straight on some personal history. I noted his interview with William Adler in which he said he was smoking so much crack he was telling the police whatever "bullshit" they wanted to hear.

Colbert’s emailed reply:

“Check man you reached out to me with that bullshit since its bullshit im (sic) straight F**K WHITEBOY THE CHAMBERS AND WHOEVER ELSE THIS AINT THE 90,S I WAS YOUG (sic) AND DIDNT KNOW SHIT IM (sic) A GROW (sic) MAN NOW IVE (sic) BEEN TO HELL AND BACK LEAVE ME THE F**K ALONE”

I will.

Rick Wershe and the DEA's Informant Problem

 A recent scathing audit severely criticizes the DEA for its sloppy management and oversight of confidential informants. At Rick Wershe’s 2003 parole hearing a DEA agent, attempting to convince the Michigan Parole Board that Rick Wershe was a major drug lord, submitted the debriefing of a DEA confidential informant who proved to be such a crack cocaine-addicted liar that the federal government had prosecuted and convicted him for perjury 12 years earlier; a fact the agent had to know. It was his informant.

The Justice Department’s Inspector General—the watchdog of the department—last month released the results of an audit of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) handling of confidential informants in drug prosecutions and it ain’t pretty.

Amid the newspaper headlines about the audit there was this from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Out of Control: The DEA Overpays Informants Without Oversight.”

And this in the Washington Times:

“DEA's criminal informants run wild under poor management: report”

Read on and you’ll see why the DEA’s long-running problem with informants has a direct relationship to the imprisonment plight of Richard Wershe, Jr.—aka—White Boy Rick.

First, let’s take a look at the findings of the Justice Department audit of the DEA informant program. The audit tells us in the criminal world, if you’re lucky enough to become a long-term DEA informant, you’ll be cruising on what a 1985 Aretha Franklin hit song termed Better-Than-Ever-Street. Examples:

*The DEA has poor management and oversight of crimes committed by on-the-books criminal informants. Informants who help the DEA make big cases that make the agents, the agency and prosecutors look good can count on their handler-agents looking the other way on a wide range of crimes they may commit, including drug dealing.

*DEA managers often devote seconds—that’s right—seconds to reviewing the suitability of informants to continue working for the agency. The audit covered the years 2003 to 2012. The auditors found in 2006 DEA managers and supervisors who sit on a long-term informant committee met for all of 15 minutes and reviewed 67 informants. The average time devoted to reviewing the suitability of each long-term informant: 13 seconds.

*Relationships between DEA agent-handlers and their snitches are ripe for trouble. Management reviews of these agent-informant relationships are often only cursory. The auditors tell us: “The DEA has no rating system to assess the quality of the information provided or services rendered by confidential sources. Instead, it relies on an agent’s knowledge and skill to assess whether a confidential source is effective."

*The DEA even uses your tax money to pay long-term disability benefits to certain informants. Auditors found the DEA paid out over $1 million in informant disability payments in a single year. The family of one informant who was killed in 1989 has received over $1.3 million in monthly installments. In 1997 the DEA filed for disability benefits for an informant who was shot one day after he was recruited. There’s just one little problem; the shooting had nothing to do with DEA informant work.

*Perhaps most troubling of all, there are reports the DEA resisted cooperating with the audit, something the agency disputes. If there was resistance to the audit maybe it’s because a similar audit in 2005 found similar mismanagement of informants by the DEA. It’s been going on a long time.

The DEA’s sloppy handling of informants and the information they provide can be seen in Rick Wershe’s 2003 parole hearing.

Wershe’s appearance before the Michigan Parole Board featured an opposed-to-parole presentation by the Wayne County prosecutor’s office that was long on histrionics (which means exaggerated, emotional and dramatic behavior) but short on substance when it came to evidence that Rick Wershe Jr. was a drug kingpin, a menace to society who needs to spend his life in prison. Several ranking Detroit cops who never had any contact with White Boy Rick were ordered to go to the hearing and testify in opposition to the release of Wershe. They tap danced and testified about how bad crime is. Well, yeah. Hard to argue with that. But they didn’t have any information about Rick Wershe, the guy who was up for parole. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

The task of making Richard J. Wershe, Jr. appear to be a drug lord or kingpin fell to another witness, DEA Special Agent Richard Crock, now-retired, a member of the so-called No Crack Crew of cops and federal agents who kicked in a lot of doors in Detroit around the time Rick Wershe was trying to get started as a wholesale dope dealer.

Crock testified under oath and submitted several documents to the Parole Board supposedly in support of the contention that Rick Wershe was a drug lord in Detroit who was supplying some of Detroit’s notorious gangsters with cocaine.

Crock’s very first exhibit for the Michigan Parole Board, marked “#1”, was a DEA-6, the name for the agency bureaucratic form for investigative reports. It featured the debriefing of a confidential informant against the infamous Chambers Brothers drug ring by Crock and another DEA agent named Tom McClain. The informant’s name had been blocked out with a felt-tip marker.

  

DEA Exhibit # 1 at Wershe's 2003 parole hearing

The Chambers Brothers had migrated to Detroit from the dirt-poor town of Marianna, Arkansas. It was a criminal rags-to-riches story. The DEA-6 submitted to the Parole Board by Agent Crock at Rick Wershe’s 2003 hearing says the informant against the Chambers Brothers had moved to Detroit from the Marianna, Arkansas area in 1983 and began to sell marijuana for Billy Joe Chambers out of a convenience store called “BJ’s Party Store.”

Even though the informant’s name was blacked out on the DEA-6 that was given to the Parole Board, his identity can be deduced from other evidence. 

In a book called Land of Opportunity about the rise and fall of the Chambers Brothers Drug Empire, author William Adler wrote: “Nobody provided the police with more information than Terry Colbert, the young man who had worked for Billy years earlier at BJ’s Party Store.” The DEA-6 noted the confidential informant had moved to Detroit from Arkansas in 1983. Adler’s book said Terry Colbert had migrated from Arkansas to Detroit in 1983. The DEA-6 and Adler's book say the informant, identified by Adler as Terry Colbert, worked for Billy Joe Chambers at a Detroit convenience store.

In this six-page DEA debriefing Colbert describes the scope of the Chambers Brothers drug operation which was truly impressive—the biggest Detroit had ever seen. But he only mentions Rick Wershe one time and it had nothing to do with drugs. Colbert said an operative of the Chambers Brothers organization bought some guns from Rick Wershe, presumably meaning Rick Wershe, Jr. But maybe not. His father was Richard or “Rick” Wershe, Sr.

DEA informant report says Wershe sold guns, not drugs. But which Wershe? Jr. or Sr.?

This is a good place to note Richard J, Wershe, Jr.’s late father, Richard J. Wershe, Sr., was a gun dealer. He also was known to some as Rick Wershe. Whether Rick Wershe, Jr. or Sr. sold the guns to the Chambers Brothers is never spelled out in the DEA-6 report. The name “Rick Wershe” is just there, with no clarification, no description of whether it was Jr. or Sr. or evidence of any further investigation of what Colbert said. The DEA-6 was typed up three days after the informant debriefing; plenty of time for the DEA to make inquiries with the FBI or BATF—the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

That’s it; one mention of Rick Wershe selling guns, not dope, to the Chambers Brothers and no due diligence explanation of whether “Rick Wershe” was Richard J. Wershe Junior or Senior.

This DEA-6 was offered to the Michigan Parole Board as Exhibit # 1, as part of the “proof” Richard Wershe, Jr. was a drug dealing menace to society who should remain locked up.

It gets better—or worse depending on how you look at it.

Terry Colbert was one of the key secret witnesses testifying before a federal grand jury investigating the Chambers Brothers drug ring.  When they went to trial Terry Colbert was one of the star witnesses for the prosecution. It was a lie-filled disaster.

The problem was Terry Colbert used crack—big time. In Land of Opportunity William Adler devotes considerable space to profiling Terry Colbert, the confidential informant quoted in Exhibit # 1 against Rick Wershe.

“He changed from an easygoing if unreliable young man to—as many who knew him put it—a ‘fiend,’” Adler wrote. Colbert had become addicted—badly—to smoking crack cocaine. Adler quotes Billy Joe Chambers as saying (Colbert) “started smoking his lights out.” Billy Joe Chambers couldn’t trust Colbert to be around crack cocaine to sell it so Colbert’s source of income to buy crack dried up. He decided to get even with his old pal, Billy Joe Chambers. “F**k it, I’ll fix him,” Colbert told Adler. Terry Colbert decided to become a police informant against the Chambers Brothers.

Adler writes that Terry Colbert walked in to the Detroit Police 5th Precinct one day and volunteered to become an informant. He met with a narc named Mick Biernacki, a member of the No Crack Crew. As noted previously, this was a team of DEA and Detroit Police officers working to build a case against the Chambers Brothers. Biernacki, the Detroit Police narc, worked closely with Richard Crock, the DEA agent. The No Crack Crew shared Colbert as an informant. 

Even though Colbert was too addled by crack to sell it, even though dope dealers didn't trust him, this didn’t bother the DEA and Detroit Police who used him as a major informant.

“I was smoking so much (crack) that whatever bullshit the cops asked me, I said yes this, no that. Whatever they wanted,” Colbert told author Adler.

Court records show that in exchange for his confidential informant work the DEA negotiated immunity from prosecution for Colbert and paid him over $16,000 for “expenses” over a two year period. Court documents also show the DEA and Detroit Police team known as the “No Crack Crew” relied on Colbert the crack addict as the confidential source who provided “probable cause” for at least 75% of the 101 search warrants (raids) executed in the Chambers Brothers drug conspiracy investigation.

When it came time to testify, Terry Colbert proved to be such an unreliable liar that he was later indicted by a federal grand jury and convicted in 1991 on eight counts of perjury. He was given a sentence of 135 months (over 11 years), the maximum under federal law. Fortunately for the government, other witnesses and evidence led to convictions in the Chambers Brothers case.

Yet, in 2003 DEA Special Agent Richard Crock chose to make the 1987 debriefing of this convicted liar Exhibit # 1 for the Michigan Parole Board in their consideration of whether to release Richard J. Wershe, Jr.

Crock had to know Terry Colbert had gone to prison for lying under oath before a federal grand jury and on the witness stand in the Chambers Brothers court trial. Crock had shared Colbert as an informant for the No Crack Crew so he was Crock’s informant! Yet, Agent Crock submitted to the Parole Board the Terry Colbert debriefing where he mentions Rick Wershe one time for selling guns, not drugs to the Chambers Brothers organization.

No one has challenged the use of information from a convicted liar to make a decision about parole for Rick Wershe and no one has questioned DEA Agent Richard Crock’s clearly misleading presentation under oath.

White Boy Rick is still in prison to this day and according to the Justice Department Inspector General the DEA still has serious problems managing confidential informants and the agents who handle them.