Whitmer Kidnapping Plotter’s Convictions Thrown Out on Appeal

A man implicated in a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) had his criminal convictions overturned Tuesday by the state Court of Appeals.

The jury in Joseph Morrison’s trial was improperly told that a kidnapping offense could form the basis for a conviction for providing material support for an act of terrorism, Judge Mark T. Boonstra wrote for the three-judge panel made up of Republican appointees. The problem is that kidnapping isn’t a “violent felony” that Michigan law requires for a terrorism conviction because the legislature in 2006 removed references to use of force from the definition, the court said. It also vacated Morrison’s gang-membership and weapons convictions.

And while the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) said other underlying felonies buttressed the terrorism conviction, the jury’s verdict form as written doesn’t make it possible to determine what offense it used for its guilty verdict, the panel said.

“Given that the trial court specifically instructed the jury to consider kidnapping as a violent felony and that the jury heard considerable testimony about the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer, the likelihood that defendant was actually convicted, at least in part, on an invalid basis tainted the jury’s verdict,” Boonstra wrote.

The plot, foiled in 2020, involved overthrowing the Michigan state government by storming the state Capitol, kidnapping Whitmer, and trying her for treason.

The conspirators were angry over Covid-19 restrictions that the governor and officials in other states put in place during the early months of the pandemic, as well as perceived threats to gun ownership.

Federal prosecutors charged six people in the plot, four of whom were convicted. State prosecutors charged eight separate people, and of those five were convicted.

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit last year upheld federal convictions against two of the men involved in concocting the plan.

Morrison, now 32, created the “Wolverine Watchmen” page on Facebook in late 2019. “Boot lickers,” “cops,” and “feds” can’t be trusted, according to his writings on the group’s page, on which he identified himself as a “unit commander.” He also said he was in Michigan, living under Whitmer’s “tyranny,” and that he was “fixing to change all that.”

The FBI later recruited an informant who joined the group but became concerned that its goal was to kill law enforcement. That informant eventually became a group leader and participated in activities like field training exercises and surveilling Whitmer’s vacation home.

Morrison was arrested in October 2020 and a Jackson County jury found him guilty in 2022 of all the charges he faced. He was sentenced to between four and 20 years in prison.

The ruling is “completely and irredeemably nonsensical, outrageous and irresponsible,” Nessel said in a news release. She vowed to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

“For the panel to declare that kidnapping is not a violent felony strains all legal credibility and insults the intelligence of every person in this State,” she said. “The Court twists itself into a knot using legal and linguistic gymnastics in order to liberate dangerous criminals using convoluted definitions of the crimes upon which they were convicted.”

Morrison’s attorney, Michael A. Faraone of Lansing, Mich., said in an email that Nessel’s office “put their case together in a sloppy manner.

“It failed to read the current version of the kidnapping statute,” he said. “Now it is lashing out at the Court of Appeals in an unprofessional manner for applying the law.”

Judges Thomas C. Cameron and Brock A. Swartzle also sat on the panel.

The case is Michigan v. Morrison, Mich. Ct. App., No. 364651, 6/9/26.