Jesse Humphrey
By: Brian Wells | Warren Weekly | Published December 5, 2025
WARREN — A 30-year-old man has been ordered to spend six to 20 years in prison for arson and animal cruelty in a September 2024 case.
Jesse Humphrey started a fire at his then-girlfriend’s home in Warren, destroying the home and killing two cats, according to a press release from the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office.
The resident was not home at the time, but he knew that her cats were in the building when he started the fire, the release states.
Humphrey was convicted of two counts of second-degree arson and two counts of first-degree animal torture.
During his sentencing Dec. 4, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Maria Panchenko argued before Circuit Court Judge Joseph Toia that the court should not accept the probation department’s sentencing recommendation of 60-240 months. Instead, she asked the judge to follow the high end of the sentencing guidelines.
Toia sentenced Humphrey to 75 to 240 months in the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections. In addition, Humphrey was ordered to have no contact with the victim or her family, and he was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution as a condition of parole.
“This defendant’s deliberate act of setting the fire and killing two innocent animals was both cruel and deeply destabilizing to the victim and the community,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said in a statement. “Arson is a violent crime, and the intentional harming of pets is an act of profound cruelty.”
Humphrey’s attorney, Grace Crivello, did not return a request for comment.
Court records show Humphrey has an additional open case in the Macomb County Circuit Court, where he is facing one charge of malicious destruction of a building with damage totaling $1,000 to $20,000. According to Esther Wolfe, communications director for the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office, Humphrey allegedly clogged a toilet in the Macomb County Jail and continuously flushed it, causing it to overflow. As a result, the cell and a dayroom needed to be sanitized, she said.