Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy fought for months to keep Michael Jackson-Bolanos behind bars after he was found not guilty of murdering Samantha Woll. Worthy lost.
He walked out on parole Tuesday, Oct. 6, Woll’s family and his attorney confirmed.
A jury cleared Jackson-Bolanos of first-degree murder in the prominent Jewish leader’s killing in July 2024 after a lengthy, high-profile trial.
He was convicted of lying to police and sentenced as a habitual offender to 18 months to 15 years.Jackson-Bolanos was granted parole in April 2026, with a July release date. The prosecutor’s office has been fighting it in court — a campaign his attorneys have called “vindictive” and an attempt at “imposing its will.”
The office filed an “emergency intervention,”
then charged Jackson-Bolanos over a 2020 incident the day before he was set to go free, according to Purna Krishnamoorthy, his co-counsel in the criminal case.
The prosecutor’s office later acknowledged those charges — two felony counts of resisting and obstructing police and an open-container violation, filed July 24 — went out without Worthy’s knowledge or approval. They were dropped once she found out, the office said.
Krishnamoorthy confirmed Jackson-Bolanos's release. Woll’s family declined to comment.
The case against him
Prosecutors accused Jackson-Bolanos, then 29, of stabbing Woll eight times during a home invasion at her Detroit home in October 2023.
Their case leaned on video of him breaking into cars near Woll’s home that night — he was the only person seen in the area when she was killed, they argued — along with her blood on his black jacket. And they said he had a motive: as a habitual offender, getting caught committing another crime meant more prison time.
His defense insisted he was innocent “without a shadow of a doubt,” arguing it wasn’t “humanly possible” for him to struggle with Woll, stab her repeatedly and flee within the prosecution’s timeline. They pointed to other suspects, including Woll’s ex-boyfriend, who first told police he thought he might have killed her before taking it back.
Then Jackson-Bolanos did something rare: he took the stand. He testified he found Woll’s body while breaking into cars, checked her pulse and ran — afraid he’d be blamed, as a Black man, for the death of a white woman. Prosecutors countered that he’d lied to police more than 40 times about that night.
The jury acquitted him of first-degree murder but deadlocked on felony murder and home invasion. A month later, a judge tossed both, citing precedent that generally bars retrying deadlocked charges that share an element with a charge the jury acquitted on.
Worthy goes to a higher court
Worthy’s office appealed and lost at the Michigan Court of Appeals, court documents show.
On Sept. 9, the Michigan Supreme Court agreed to hear part of the appeal: whether Jackson-Bolanos can be retried on first-degree home invasion.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her atasahouri@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Man acquitted in Samantha Woll case released, family says
