Judge Approves Early Release Of Dying 91-Year-Old Drug Mule

DETROIT (WWJ) - A 91-year-old Indiana man imprisoned for taking at least 2,600 pounds of cocaine to Michigan for a Mexican drug cartel is being set free early.

Federal prosecutors requested the early release of Leo Sharp because of an undisclosed but terminal medical condition. A federal judge in Detroit approved; and Sharp, who reportedly only has six to nine months to live, was released from a federal medical center last Friday.

"The director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons contends, and this court agrees, that the defendant's terminal medical condition and limited life expectancy constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons warranting the requested reduction," U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds wrote in her decision.

Sharp, of Michigan City, Indiana, was sentenced to three years in federal prison in May 2014 after admitting he drove loads of cocaine into Michigan. He was reportedly paid more than $1 million for his services.

Sharp was running more than 100 bricks of cocaine, over 2,000 pounds, from Tucson, Arizona, to Detroit when he was pulled over by Michigan State Police on I-94 near Chelsea, 60 miles west of Detroit, after making a bad lane change in 2011.

When a state trooper approached, Sharp was upset and declared, "Just kill me and let me leave this planet."

Sharp, a WWII veteran who has no criminal record, later told police he was forced by a Mexican drug cartel to transport the cocaine or else his family would have been killed. He's one of 19 people under indictment in a case connected to Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel.

"The government is not aware of a single courier, in recent memory, who has transported the volume of cocaine to southeast Michigan that the defendant did in the 21-month time period he was active in this organization," the prosecutor wrote.

Requests for compassionate release are typically rejected.