Rick Wershe Jr. as a teen and today.
RIchard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr.'s battle for freedom continues.
Wershe, 46, who has been locked up 28 years on a drug trafficking conviction, is turning to the state Supreme Court.
His appellate attorney, Peter Van Hoek ,on Friday filed briefs with the court asking for a resentencing, reports Oralander Brand-Williams of The Detroit News.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Dana Hathaway had agreed to a resentencing hearing, but the state Court of Appeals nixed that. Wershe is serving a life sentence on a drug conviction back in the late 1980s when he was a teenager.
Before and after his imprison,ment, Wershe has cooperated with federal and local law enforcement, resulting in arrests of drug dealers and crooked cops. But he's never gotten a cut in time as a result of his cooperation, which is unusual.
Van Hoek wants the Supreme Court to uphold Hathaway's decision. His brief says:
The decision of the Court of Appeals is clearly erroneous and will cause manifest injustice to Mr. Wershe, the appeal concerns legal principles of major importance to the state's jurisprudence, and the opinion conflicts with decisions of this Court and of other panels of the Court of Appeals."
The present case involves an important and significant issue of law and fact. In her opinion and order, Judge Hathaway ruled that because Mr. Wershe’s original sentence of mandatory nonparolable life as a juvenile for a non-homicide offense was indisputably unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, pursuant to subsequent decisions of the United States Supreme Court...”
-- Allan Lengel
