Michael Jackson-Bolanos sentenced for lying to police, won’t face retrial in Samantha Woll murder case
A Wayne County judge found on Friday that retrying the case would be considered “double jeopardy” under the U.S. Constitution.
The booking photo of Michael Jackson-Bolanos, who has been charged with homicide in connection to the fatal stabbing of metro Detroit synagogue leader Samantha Woll.
The man acquitted last month in the first-degree murder of Detroit synagogue leader Samantha Woll will not face a retrial, a Wayne County judge decided Friday.
Michael Jackson-Bolanos, 29, of Detroit, was sentenced to 18 months to 15 years in prison for lying to police officers in relation to Woll’s stabbing death inside her Lafayette Park townhouse last fall.
The jury in the case was deadlocked on counts of felony murder and home invasion, leading prosecutors to seek a retrial in the case. However, Jackson-Bolanos’ attorneys filed a motion last month to dismiss the remaining charges, citing a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court case which held that deadlocked charges cannot be retried in a case where a defendant is acquitted of similar charges, per the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The judge affirmed the motion and dismissed both charges.
Prosecutors in the case called the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling “bad law,” insisting to the court that they plan to appeal the decision. Van Houten acknowledged that she agreed with prosecutors about the United States v. Scott Yeager ruling, but said she was legally bound and couldn’t “ignore precedent that has been set by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
While lying to police officers typically carries a maximum five-year sentence in Michigan, Jackson-Bolanos faces up to 15 years in prison for his status as a habitual offender, minus 243 days for time already served.
“Lying to a police officer is not some victimless crime that is not important or isn’t serious,” said Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Dominic DeGrazia before the sentencing. “Lying to a police officer is how innocent people get convicted in crimes.”
The judge said she took Jackson-Bolanos’ previous criminal history into account before sentencing, as well as the amount of times the defendant lied throughout the course of the investigation and subsequent trial.
“If lying was an Olympic sport, you would get the gold medal sir,” Van Houten said to Jackson-Bolanos. “Because you told lie after lie after lie throughout those interviews, interrogations and even a few on the stand. And the number of lies does factor into this.”
Defense attorney Brian Brown called the claims by the judge that his client lied on the stand “unsubstantiated,” and promised to appeal the sentence.
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