The Detroit man found not guilty of murdering prominent Detroit Jewish leader Samantha Woll — but convicted of lying to police — has been granted parole by the Michigan Parole Board.
But Michael Jackson-Bolanos remains behind bars while the Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy fights his release, a move his attorneys blasted as “vindictive” during a Tuesday, Aug. 4, news conference.
He received an 18-month to 15-year sentence as a habitual offender. He has served about two years and 8 months since Dec. 2023.
Jackson-Bolanos’s release has been pushed back three times since July 1 — a pattern of the prosecutor’s office “imposing its will” to keep him incarcerated, including filing charges from a 2020 incident against him a day before release, according to Purna Krishnamoorthy, his co-counsel in the original criminal case.
“Michael was found not guilty of murder. A jury heard the evidence. A jury deliberated, and a jury acquitted Michael of murder,” she said.
“Justice is not defined by whether the prosecutor’s office gets the outcome it wants.”Worthy’s office did not respond to criticisms that the move was vindictive but said the office asked the Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Annette Berry for him to remain incarcerated while its appeal of the parole decision awaits a ruling, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.
More, Maria Miller, a spokesperson for Worthy’s office, said they challenged the parole decision “through the appropriate means of seeking leave to appeal from the Circuit Court and not in the press.”
The office also acknowledged in that statement that new charges were filed against Jackson-Bolanos on July 24 — two felony counts of resisting and obstructing a police officer and an open-container charge stemming from a 2020 incident — without Worthy’s knowledge or approval, and right before Jackson-Bolanos was set to be released for a second time.
Worthy ordered the charges dismissed upon learning of them, Miller said. But Krishnamoorthy finds it hard to believe Worthy didn’t know.
“This was an extremely high-profile case. There was extreme amounts of resources that were put into this case. I find it unbelievable that their office wouldn’t be keeping tabs on every movement made in this case at all times,” she said during Tuesdays news conference.
‘Pattern’ of delays, lawyer says
Jackson-Bolanos, then 29, was accused and cleared of fatally stabbing Woll eight times during an alleged home invasion at her Detroit home in October 2023. The case became one of the region’s most closely watched trials — to this day, people remain split on whether he was the killer.
After a five-week trial and five days of deliberations in July 2024, a jury found him not guilty of first-degree murder, convicted him only of lying to police, and deadlocked on two remaining charges: felony murder and home invasion. The following month, Wayne County Circuit Judge Margaret Van Houten dismissed the deadlocked charges, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent from Yeager v. United States in 2009, which generally bars retrying deadlocked charges that share an element with a charge on which a jury has acquitted.
Worthy’s office said immediately after that it planned to appeal the dismissal to the Michigan Court of Appeals and has since lost its appeal, court documents show. The prosecutor’s office is still fighting: the case is now pending in the Michigan Supreme Court — which is why the Worthy’s office appealed Jackson-Bolanos’s parole, Miller said.
Van Houten sentenced Jackson-Bolanos to 18 months to 15 years in prison for lying to police — a sentence elevated by his status as a habitual offender.
“I want to be very clear of what that conviction was: lying to a police officer regarding an investigation of larcenies from motor vehicles,” Krishnamoorthy said during Tuesday’s news conference.
“Our systems entrusts decisions to different institutions: the jury decides guilt, the courts apply law, the parole board determines whether an eligible individual should be paroled. And here, the parole board determined Michael is an eligible individual and he should be paroled.”
The first time Jackson-Bolanos was granted parole was April 28, 2026 with a release date of July 1.
But June 30, the day before he was set to walk free, prosecutors filed an “emergency intervention to stop Michael’s release” and did so in the wrong court, Krishnamoorthy said. Jackson-Bolanos’s release date was then moved to July 29, but “for the second time, an action by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office stopped Michael’s release at the 11th hour,” Krishnamoorthy said.
On July 28, again, one day before his release date, a warrant request for the 2020 charges, which had previously been denied twice by Worthy’s office, was “suddenly obtained immediately before Michael was scheduled to walk out of prison,” Krishnamoorthy continued.
Worthy’s office said Jackson-Bolanos’s new release date is Aug. 26, although Krishnamoorthy said his legal counsel was told he had a parole hearing instead at that date.
Deep divide on Jackson-Bolanos
During trial, the divide over Jackson-Bolanos’s guilt was stark on both sides. Prosecutors and Woll’s family remained adamant he was the killer.
“There is absolutely zero doubt (in) my family’s mind that MJB did this to my sister,” said Woll’s sister, Monica Woll Rosen, after Jackson-Bolanos’s acquittal. She declined comment ahead of Tuesday’s news conference on behalf of the family.
The prosecution’s case rested on video footage showing Jackson-Bolanos breaking into cars near Woll’s home the night of the killing — they argued he was the only person seen in the area around 4:20 a.m., when she was killed — along with Woll’s blood found on his black jacket, and a motive: as a habitual offender, he faced more prison time if caught committing another crime.
Jackson-Bolanos took the rare step of testifying in his own defense, admitting he found Woll’s body while breaking into cars, checked her pulse, and fled fearing blame as a Black man in the killing of a white woman — but after having lied to police more than 40 times about his actions that night, prosecutors argued.
His defense attorneys, meanwhile, maintained his innocence “without a shadow of a doubt,” arguing it wasn’t “humanly possible” for him to have struggled with Woll, stabbed her repeatedly, and fled within the prosecution’s timeline. They pointed to other potential suspects, including Woll’s ex-boyfriend, who initially told police he thought he may have killed her before recanting.
“Having been the original trial attorney on this case, having looked at all of the evidence and having understood the way that the trial proceeded, I know that he’s innocent,” Krishnamoorthy affirmed again during Tuesday’s news conference.
“I can’t say it enough times to make someone believe it. He’s no the person responsible for her death. It’s just that simple.”
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at asahouri@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Samantha Woll case defendant wins parole as Kym Worthy fights release
Reporting by Andrea May Sahouri, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Andrea May Sahouri, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
