Ex-drug dealer, informant White Boy Rick in court Friday

Richard Wershe Jr., a convicted drug dealer and former police informant known as White Boy Rick, is scheduled to appear in a Detroit courtroom Friday morning.

His attorney, Ralph Musilli, filed a motion in Wayne County Circuit Court asking a judge to vacate the life sentence Wershe is serving and re-sentence him. A hearing will be held Friday on it.

Wershe, 46, was sentenced to life in prison without parole when he was 18 after being convicted of possession with intent to deliver more than 650 grams of cocaine, worth about $5 million.

The sentence was changed to life with the possibility of parole, according to court documents.

Musilli said it’s his understanding there won’t be testimony taken Friday and said he expects Wayne County Circuit Judge Dana Hathaway to rule on his request.

“The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office opposes the defendant's motion because he has not provided a sufficient basis to invalidate his sentence,” Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Maria Miller said in an e-mail Wednesday.

Musilli said in his brief that his client was 17 at the time of the crime and argued Wershe’s sentence is unconstitutional under prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

“As a 14 year old, (Wershe) was recruited and introduced to the world of illegal drugs by the policing agencies of the government,” he wrote in a court document. “For over three  years, he was used by the government to infiltrate the drug trade operating in Detroit.”

Wershe, who has spent 27 years in prison so far, was one of the city's most flamboyant drug dealers and dated the niece of former Mayor Coleman Young.

In prison, Wershe cooperated with FBI agents in other criminal investigations with the hope of gaining parole. At a parole hearing in 2003, among those who spoke on his behalf were Kid Rock, who knew Wershe as a teen, and two retired FBI agents.

Wershe, an FBI special agent testified, helped break up a Detroit drug-and-murder ring known as Best Friends. But Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Greg Anderson told the parole board that Wershe was dealing up to 300 kilograms of cocaine a month in the mid-1980s.

He was denied parole in 2003 after nine members of the 10-member board voted to keep him locked up.

Contact Elisha Anderson: eanderson@freepress.com or 313-222-5144