Detroit Council Hopeful Who Shot Wife’s Car May Be Kicked Off Ballot

DETROIT, MI — Voters didn’t give the nod to one of the four convicted felons who appeared on the ballot in Detroit’s mayoral primary election Tuesday. But they did advance to the fall Detroit City Council election former state senator Virgil Smith, who spent 10 months in jail in an infamous May 2015 incident in which he walked out of his house naked and fired an assault weapon at his ex-wife’s Mercedes-Benz.

General election voters won’t get a chance to elect Smith, who pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of malicious destruction, if Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is successful in her office’s ongoing fight to kick him off the ballot. On Thursday, the prosecutor filed requests with the Michigan Supreme Court for expedited reviews of her earlier petitions to have Smith’s plea agreement set aside.

The expedited review is necessary, Worthy’s office argued, to get the matter settled before Nov. 7 general election ballots are certified. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, and click here to find your local Michigan Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

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Smith got 22 percent of the vote in the Detroit City Council District 2 primary as voters denied a second term to City Council President Pro Tem George Cushingberry Jr. Their top pick was Roy McAlister Jr., who got 25 percent of the vote in the six-way race. A Supreme Court decision in Worthy's favor could give Cushingberry, a longtime Detroit politician who served in the Legislature, another chance to retain his seat.

The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected Worthy’s bid to vacate the plea in April. Last month, she renewed the fight, asking the appellate court “to remedy the lower court’s error.” Smith had already resigned from the Senate when the first appeal was heard, and the court said in April it had no indication he planned to run for office.

“The Court of Appeals erred in dismissing the People’s appeal as moot when the plea agreement provisions could be reinstated,” the appeal petition says.

Smith told The Detroit News he has “learned some hard lessons from all of this, and I’ve moved forward.”

See Also: Half Of Detroit Mayoral Candidates Are Convicted Felons

(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)