Michael Allen Usan is an American lawyer and legal official who has served as a judge in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida since 2010. Usan gained national attention in 2023 as the presiding judge of the trial for the murderers of rapper/singer Jahseh Onfroy, best known as

XXXTentacion Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy (January 23, 1998 – June 18, 2018), known professionally as XXXTentacion, was an American rapper and singer-songwriter. Though a controversial figure due to his widely publicized legal troubles, XXXTentacion ga ...

Life and career

Usan graduated from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

for his

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in 1984 and from

Wake Forest University Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the un ...

for his J.D. in 1987. Usan was a Judge Advocate General in the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

from 1987 to 1992. Prior to entering private practice in 1993, he also served as a prosecutor for a brief period of time in

Broward County Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...

. Up until his court appointment in 2010, he practiced criminal defense law in

Fort Lauderdale A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

XXXTentacion murder trial

Usan gained national attention as the presiding judge over the trial for three of the murderers of rapper and singer-songwriter Jahseh Onfroy (

). He gained attention for his sternness towards the defense attorneys for Onfroy's murderers. He was also commended for his harshness towards the murderers and his compassion towards Onfroy's family and fanbase, delivering a direct speech to Onfroy's family and fans about Onfroy's legacy before the murderers' sentencing, and with Usan stating to shooter Michael Boatwright at his sentencing that he is glad that Boatwright will die in prison. He sentenced two of the three murderers to the mandatory

life in prison Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...

without the possibility of

parole Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or ...

, and sentenced Michael Boatwright, the shooter, to an uncommonly high sentence for a single murder: two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus another consecutive 30 years.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Usan, Michael 21st-century American judges Florida state court judges Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Minnesota alumni Wake Forest University alumni