99 years for a murder he didn't commit.
Check out the Michael Thompson Clemency Project here.
Corey McCullough started playing football when he was 9. He went all state with Detroit King Football. Michigan State wanted him but first he needed two years at Grand Rapids Community College to get his grades up, he says.
“I arrived in August of 1991 to find that they didn't even have housing for their student athletes, we were pointed to a drug infested apartment building called Metro Gardens,” he says. “To make a long story short I played a couple of years and fell weak to some temptations and and eventually got kicked out of school and became a full-time drug dealer.”
Today McCullough, who is 49, is serving 60-99 years for a murder he didn’t commit. It was a pot deal gone wrong. The other dealer pulled the trigger and even said so at McCullough’s trial. McCullough wasn’t even in the house when the killing took place. But Michigan has a strict felony murder law: if you’re involved in the commission of a felony that results in a death, you’re on the hook for first-degree murder.
Still, the jury couldn’t reach a guilty verdict on first-degree murder after days of deliberation. In the end, they settled for second-degree murder and possession of a firearm. Once prosecutors had a guilty verdict they set about stacking his priors, mostly for drug crimes, and that’s how he got the 60-99.
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