The legal ground just shifted under one of Michigan’s most closely watched political-violence cases. Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals vacated the conviction of Joseph Morrison, the Jackson County man found guilty in 2022 of aiding the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and sent his case back for more proceedings. The three-judge panel concluded the terrorism charge could not rest on the underlying kidnapping count because, in their view, Michigan law does not treat the current kidnapping statute as a qualifying violent felony. As a result, Morrison’s terrorism-related conviction and his linked gang and felony-firearm counts were wiped away for now, pending whatever comes next in the lower court.
The appeals decision specifically scrapped Morrison’s material-support-for-terrorism conviction along with the gang and firearm convictions and remanded the case for a new trial, according to The Detroit News. The opinion zeroes in on a 2006 amendment to Michigan’s kidnapping law and says the statute no longer contains the explicit force element the panel says is required for a "violent felony" predicate.
What the court said
The three-judge panel wrote that Michigan’s terrorism statute depends on an underlying violent felony. Under the court’s reading of state law, kidnapping - at least as currently written - no longer qualifies as that kind of predicate offense. AP News reports that the ruling turned on this legal interpretation rather than any effort to reweigh the trial evidence or second-guess the jury’s factual findings.
Officials and lawyers react
The decision sparked sharp reactions. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel blasted the ruling as "completely and irredeemably nonsensical, outrageous and irresponsible" and said her office will ask the Michigan Supreme Court to step in. Defense lawyers, unsurprisingly, saw it very differently and praised the panel’s statutory analysis. "It's always a great day when a court delivers justice," defense attorney Michael Faraone told The Detroit News.
Case background
Morrison, along with Pete Musico and Paul Bellar, was convicted at a 2022 Jackson County trial on counts that included providing material support for a terrorist act, gang membership and felony firearm. At sentencing, Morrison was ordered to serve multi-year prison terms - described in local coverage as consecutive four-to-20-year terms on two counts plus a separate two-year firearm term - details reported by Michigan Advance. Earlier courtroom battles over motions for new trials were tracked in local reporting before this latest appellate twist.
Why this matters
Prosecutors and victims' advocates have long framed the Whitmer-plot prosecutions as a warning shot against political violence. The reality has been messier. AP News notes that the sprawling investigation produced federal convictions of alleged ringleaders alongside several acquittals in state court, leaving a patchwork of results that this new opinion is likely to tangle even further. A technical debate over what counts as a "violent felony" now sits at the center of one of the state’s most politically charged cases.
What’s next
The state has already signaled it will ask the Michigan Supreme Court to weigh in, and that court’s eventual decision could reshape how prosecutors deploy certain Michigan statutes in terrorism-related prosecutions. For the moment, Morrison’s convictions are vacated and the case is headed back to the trial court for whatever happens next, while the attorney general’s office sorts through its appellate options, as outlined by reporting from PBS NewsHour.
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