Prosecutor moves to halt Virgil Smith's Detroit City Council bid
DETROIT (WJBK) - As part of a plea deal, former state senator Virgil Smith agreed not to run for office for five years.
But now he's running for Detroit City Council. At issue is a Wayne County judge's ruling last year that the prosecutor's office could not force Smith to resign from the Senate as part of a plea deal.
Smith had been charged with multiple felonies for shooting up his ex-wife's car in 2015.
Instead of going to prison, Smith pleaded guilty to malicious destruction of property. The deal called for him to resign, spend 10 months in jail, and agree not to run for office for five years.
Judge Lawrence Talon ruled that Worthy overstepped her bounds, but Smith resigned anyway.
The prosecutor asked the Michigan Court of Appeals to reinstate the deal, but they declined and ruled, in part, that Smith didn't plan to run for office again.
Shortly after Smith got out of jail, smith declared that he was running for city council. Now the prosecutor wants the Michigan State Supreme Court to fix a problem that Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Lindsey complained about before Smith was led off to jail.
"We were just sitting in the witness room discussing and he said to me in the witness room," she said. "I wish my client would just go ahead and resign, because it would make everything easier. And he said it was a problem created by the court."
Smith is still running and said this afternoon: "I've learned a number of hard lessons and I'm moving on."
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Maria Miller of the prosecutor's office released a statement urging the court to act quickly.
It says: "In the event that he should win the primary election on Aug. 8, 2017, we would move the court for immediate consideration and try to expedite review .. and ask for a decision prior to the date the ballots are printed."
There is no chance Smith will be knocked off the ballot before next Tuesday's primary. But Prosecutor Kym Worthy wants to ensure that he doesn't end up on the November ballot.