Michael Thompson freed after 25 years of a 42-to-60-year marijuana sentence
Michael Thompson, 69, walked out of Parnall Correctional Facility on 28 January 2021 after serving about 25 years of a 42-to-60-year sentence for selling three pounds of marijuana in Flint. Governor Gretchen Whitmer had commuted his sentence five weeks earlier after the state attorney general called the term unheard of for a marijuana sale.
🇺🇸 Parnall Correctional Facility, Jackson, Michigan · Michigan, United States
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Prison
42-60 years (commuted, released after about 25 years)
Michael Thompson, a 69-year-old Flint native, was released from prison on the morning of 28 January 2021 after serving roughly 25 years of a 42-to-60-year sentence for selling marijuana.[1]He was one of four men whose sentences Governor Gretchen Whitmer commuted on 22 December 2020, and all four were released on the same day.[2][3]
Thompson had been sentenced in the mid-1990s for selling three pounds of cannabis to an undercover officer, with firearms charges attached to the case.[2]Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel pressed for clemency after Thompson contracted the coronavirus in prison, writing that a decades-long sentence for selling marijuana was unheard of even with firearms offences, and noting the offence would carry at most four years under current law.[2]“The ‘tough on crime’ and ‘war on drugs’ eras have fractured countless families,” Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist said on the day of the release.[3]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Prison
42-60 years (commuted, released after about 25 years)
A federal court sentenced Christopher L. Daniels, 47, of Tallahassee, Florida, to 25 years in prison after a jury convicted him of possessing controlled substances with intent to distribute and possessing a firearm as a felon. A January 2026 search of his home seized a pound (about 0.45 kg) of marijuana alongside methamphetamine, cocaine, crack cocaine, synthetic cathinones and four pistols.
Nigel White was sentenced in Brown County court to 18 years in prison plus 10 years of extended supervision for his role in the August 2024 marijuana deal on Berner Street where Brandon Ramirez was shot dead. White, one of five people charged, had pleaded no contest to felony murder; prosecutors said he drove a getaway vehicle.
Charged 5Sentenced 1Prison 18 years initial confinement and 10 years extended supervisionDeaths 1
A federal judge sentenced Christopher S. Robinson, 31, of Springfield to 15 years in prison for possessing methamphetamine and fentanyl for distribution, a case that began with a May 2024 raid in Jacksonville. Police reported finding 1.8 pounds of cannabis there and charged him with felony cannabis possession with intent to deliver.
Six traffickers were sentenced on 4 November 2026 in the Northern District of West Virginia to a combined 37 years in federal prison for fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking. Officers seized about 68.15 kilograms of marijuana in two of the cases, including 150 pounds at a Keyser duplex, alongside fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine.
