Former Michigan House Speaker Rick Johnson has surrendered at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Minnesota to serve a 55-month sentence for pocketing bribes and corrupting the state’s marijuana industry, according to an inmate database updated Saturday.
The database shows Johnson, 70, among the 433 inmates at FPC Duluth near the western edge of Lake Superior. The prison is about 700 miles northwest of Lansing where Johnson was one of the most powerful Republican lawmakers in the state before becoming a lobbyist and chief regulator of Michigan’s marijuana industry.
That career ended in scandal after the politician from LeRoy received more than $110,000 in bribes from marijuana lobbyists and a businessman while serving as chairman of the medical marijuana licensing board from May 2017-April 2019. The illegal payoffs included repeated trysts with a sex worker who called him “Batman.”
Johnson had been ordered to surrender by Saturday after losing a last-ditch attempt to shorten his time behind bars and serve part of the sentence under house arrest as he recuperates from heart bypass surgery.
Johnson already had received one delay. He was supposed to start serving the sentence in late October, but U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering delayed the reporting date after Johnson underwent coronary artery bypass grafting surgery.
This story appeared in the Detroit News