David Ashenfelter, Joe Swickard and Zachary Gorchow, Detroit Free Press, March 24, 2008
UPDATED AT 2:10 P.M.: Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty today with perjury, obstruction, conspiracy and misconduct. Kilpatrick said that he expects “full and complete vindication.”
The mayor spoke two hours after Worthy announced to a packed news conference that she is charging Kilpatrick with eight felonies and Beatty with seven.
Kilpatrick, reading from a prepared statement at a press conference, said he is “deeply disappointed,” but not surprised by Worthy’s decision.
“This has been a very flawed process from the beginning,” he said. “I look forward to complete exoneration once all the facts in this matter have been brought forth.”
{snip}
[The mayor’s attorney, Dan Webb.] said he is not being paid by taxpayer dollars, but refused to say from what account Kilpatrick is paying him.
Worthy said the perjury charges accuse the two of lying during a whistle-blower lawsuit about the firing of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown and about their romantic relationship.
Kilpatrick, 38, serving his seventh year in office, is the first Detroit mayor to face criminal charges while still in office. The perjury charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
{snip}
Shortly after Worthy’s announcement, Kilpatrick appointees streamed into the mayor’s suite on the 11th floor of city hall to meet with Kilpatrick.
The meeting appeared to be brief, and appointees walked out while dozens of reporters and photographers waited to be admitted to the mayor’s recently redecorated main conference room.
One of the appointees, John Prymack, who runs Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority, said Kilpatrick’s message was simple: “Do your job, just do your job,” Prymack quoted the mayor as saying. “Focus on your job.”
During her news conference, Worthy said city lawyers had tried to erect barriers to her investigation, forcing prosecutors to go to court to try to obtain documents. She said investigators are still trying to obtain documents for the investigation, which will continue.
“At every bend and turn, there have been attempts by the city through one lawyer or another to block aspects of our investigation,” Worthy said. “Some documents have been turned over, but we have been told that others have been destroyed or lost. We don’t know when or by whom.”
She said the investigation wasn’t about sex, but about destroying the lives and careers of three good cops.
{snip}
She added: “Our investigation has clearly shown that public dollars were used, people’s lives were ruined, the justice system severely mocked and the public trust trampled on.”
{snip}
Worthy’s investigation began after the Free Press uncovered text messages that showed a romantic relationship between Kilpatrick and Beatty—a relationship both had denied under oath during the police whistle-blower lawsuit last summer. The pair also gave misleading testimony about the firing of Brown, the messages show.
Despite the false testimony, a Wayne County Circuit Court jury last September awarded Brown and Nelthrope $6.5 million in damages. Kilpatrick vowed to appeal, but on Oct. 17, abruptly decided to settle the case and a second police whistle-blower suit involving former mayoral bodyguard Walt Harris for $8.4 million—$9 million with legal costs.
Kilpatrick settled after the cops’ lawyer, Mike Stefani, informed the mayor’s lawyer that he had the incriminating text messages and would reveal them in court papers he planned to file to justify his request for legal fees in the whistle-blower case.
{snip}
Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Colombo Jr. released the secret agreement last month after the Kilpatrick administration repeatedly denied its existence. Colombo released the agreement and other secret settlement records after the administration appealed unsuccessfully to the Michigan Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court, which rejected Kilpatrick’s claim that the documents weren’t public documents.
The City Council, which was kept in the dark about Kilpatrick’s reasons for settling the lawsuit and never saw the confidential side agreement, voted 7-1 last week to pass an advisory resolution calling for the mayor to resign. It also ordered an investigation of the episode and directed its auditor general to look into spending by the mayor’s office and the city Law Department.
Kilpatrick insisted during his televised apology that there was no cover-up. He accused the Free Press of illegally obtaining the text messages—which the newspaper denies—and accusing the media of conducting a public lynching. He said the text messages and the settlement agreement that concealed them should never have been made public.
He also said the text messages were private even though he signed a policy directive in June 2000 advising city employees that all electronic communications should be considered public.
So far, Kilpatrick has refused to step down, saying he is on a divinely inspired mission to help rebuild the city. But conviction of a felony would force him to resign.
{snip}
He has been beset by repeated controversies over extravagant spending with his city-issued credit card, lying publicly about ordering the police department to lease a Lincoln Navigator for his wife and battening down information hatches at City Hall, making it more difficult for reporters and the public to inquire about his activities.
Besides criminal charges, the text messaging scandal and how city-paid lawyers responded to it could result in professional misconduct charges from the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission.
If Kilpatrick is bound over for trial, Webb said he would ask the trial judge to keep the text messages out of evidence. He said federal law prohibited SkyTel from ever releasing the messages in the whistle-blower suit. Webb also said no taxpayer funds would be used to pay his attorney fee.
{snip}
[Editor’s Note: An earlier story about Mayor Kilpatrick can be read here.]
Original article
Email
David Ashenfelter
at ashenf@freepress.com.
(Posted on March 24, 2008)
Comments
Kilpatrick is described as America’s first hip hop mayor. That might be rather apt, as he might well end up in the place were most good hip-hoppers wind up going.
Posted by Question Diversity at 5:42 PM on March 24
I don’t see how he can beat the case, except by juror-nullification. The court recorder has him on record as lying under oath.
If he takes this to trial and loses, he won’t do very well at sentencing. His best bet is a plea deal.
The married white woman he was sleeping with is going to get thrown to the wolves. It is an odds-on bet her husband will sell their house, take the kids and move while she is locked up.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 6:55 PM on March 24
They can charge him with every crime in the book but…like every black in trouble…they get away with it…even murder….like OJ did!!
Posted by lydia at 7:26 PM on March 24
“The married white woman he was sleeping with is going to get thrown to the wolves.” Michael C. Scott
He wasn’t sleeping with a white woman. She was black, and I guarantee you that neither of them were sleeping.
Bra Kwame, Detroit’s first “gangsta” mayor, has tried everything typical (an Obamaism) of ghetto blacks when caught in the act of criminal behavior. First, he cried loudly to the local media after he was questioned on the stand about his sexual relationship during the trial saying, to paraphrase, “they’re trying to stereotype a black man as being sexually promiscuous.” That was his first race card.
Then, the sexual relationship was found to be true.
After being found out to be a liar, he played the God card saying that The Almighty chose him to lead Detroit, and he was going to continue doing just that.
When the transcripts came out regarding his sexually charged messages between himself and Beatty, he had a press conference and played another race card. He said that in the past few weeks, he had been called the “n” word many times.
Bra Kwame is indifferent to the cost and humiliation to the city. After his sentence is served out, and it will be mild, he will run for another office be it at the state or federal level. And he’ll get in.
Another black will run for mayor and of course, win, and the tragic-comedy will continue for Michigan’s Lagos, Nigeria on the river.
The gangstas will still terrorize the city, drugs will keep on flowing, the streets will still be trash-strewn, garbage will still pile up, the schools will still be a mess, high local taxes will still be demanded from any working Detroit citizen, crime will flourish, everyone but the local (incompetent) leadership will be blamed for the continuing decay, and section 8 housing will predominate the real estate market. This is the pattern in America when it comes to black “communities” and there is no end in sight. NOTHING WILL CHANGE.
By the way, blacks who are leaving the city have moved to the cities that surround Detroit, and the process of decay has begun in those communities.
Posted by Proactive at 10:29 PM on March 24
“The married white woman he was sleeping with is going to get thrown to the wolves. It is an odds-on bet her husband will sell their house, take the kids and move while she is locked up.”
The woman was absoulutely, positively black.
Posted by at 10:30 PM on March 24
Wouldn’t you know it? He made a T.V. statement saying he had heard the “n” word more times recently than ever, and it was also directed at his wife and kids, even though the prosecutor, the city council, and the cops who sued him are black.
Blacks should all have a prepared speech blaming whitey everytime they get caught, which is often, no matter if it is in a village deep in the African jungle.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 12:30 AM on March 25
“Blacks should all have a prepared speech blaming whitey everytime they get caught …”
They do in fact have such a speech, which they pull out every time they get into trouble.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 11:52 AM on March 25
The gal I saw online testifying was white, with straight brown hair. On the other hand, my PC speaker amp is dead, so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Mea culpa; in this case, she was probably a witness.
That said, the gal is probably going to get thrown to the wolves as there’s no way she’ll be able to afford the sort of lawyer Fitzpatrick will hire. The little people always get thrown to the wolves, unless they move very quickly to get a plea-bargain.
Plea bargains in exchange for testimony against co-defendants work on the principle that the first person on the bus gets the best seat.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:32 PM on March 25
Good luck on finding a panel of twelve Detroit natives (blacks) who will vote to convict. The odds are the same for world peace.
Posted by Eurotexan at 12:41 PM on March 25
“Plea bargains in exchange for testimony against co-defendants work on the principle that the first person on the bus gets the best seat.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:32 PM on March 25”
Be careful what you say there, Mr. Scott. Don’t you realize that the word “Bus” is deeply racist. Where there is a bus, there will inevitably be someone sitting in the back of it. Surely you must realize the deep historical pain caused to black people by buses. Even mentioning the B-word should be a hate crime, and no doubt soon will be in any number of American cities.
Posted by CSinAL at 11:00 PM on March 26
When I first heard of this, it did not suprise me.
The ‘hip-hop’ mayor of Detroit displayed a very impressive exterior. He spoke reasonably well, and dressed impeccably. He was charismatic and ambitious. He was supposedly educated.
But behind the veneer lay the real “Black man”. Crude. Intelligent enough to function in society, but still well below average intelligence. Not able to resist immediate gratification for future rewards. Two generations out of the jungle.
Sure we have our nit-wits in the the white race also, but those are character flaws not our entire make-up.
Like I said, I was not surprised.
Posted by jayfresh at 3:22 PM on March 27
