Detroit Mayor, Ex-Aide Charged With Perjury, Conspiracy, Misconduct

DETROIT _ Wayne County, Mich., Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty on Monday 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 news 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.”

The mayor’s attorney, Dan Webb, said the mayor will be found innocent of the charges and will not resign. “This man, my client, the mayor, is entitled to his day in court,” he said. “If this man is required to resign his office before his jury trial, that means he’s going to be punished before his day in court.”

Webb said he has instructed Kilpatrick to not respond to reporters’ questions. “We’re not going to try this case in the press.”

Webb said he hoped the mayor would be arraigned Monday, but said a specific time and location had not been reached.

“We’re ready to go,” he said. “And we want to go to court today.”

But Webb said Worthy’s office has yet to provide a copy of the charges to him. And Webb said he would seek to block what so far has been the linchpin in the scandal _ the text messages exchanged between Kilpatrick and Beatty _ from being introduced at the trial.

He said federal law bars the release of such messages in a civil case, and so the prosecution’s obtaining of them is tainted.

Even if the text messages are introduced, Kilpatrick’s testimony “is not a perjury case,” Webb said, because the questions asked were too ambiguous.

“After a jury has heard the actual evidence in a courtroom,” he said, “the mayor will be found not guilty and he will be exonerated of each one of the charges.”

Webb also accused Worthy of “selective prosecution,” saying he has not found a single instance of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office charging a witness in a civil case with perjury. Webb said he is not being paid by taxpayer dollars, but refused to say from what account Kilpatrick is paying him.

There was no immediate comment from Beatty’s lawyers.

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.

“Lying cannot be tolerated, even if a judge and jury can see through it and doesn’t buy the line,” Worthy said at the news conference. “Witnesses must give truthful testimony,” she added. “Oaths mean something.”

It wasn’t immediately clear when the mayor and Beatty would turn themselves in to be booked and later arraigned on the charges in 36th District Court in Detroit. They could be arraigned as early as 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Worthy declined to say whether she thinks the mayor should step down. Beatty resigned Feb. 8.

Soon 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.

“Gary Brown’s, Harold Nelthrope’s and Walter Harris’ lives and careers were forever changed,” Worthy said. “They were ruined financially and their reputations were completely destroyed because they chose to be dutiful police officers.”

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.”

Worthy said she had discussed the investigation with U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy, but declined to say what they discussed. Murphy declined today to comment on Worthy’s statement. The FBI is monitoring the investigation, according to people familiar with the case.

She said her staff had reviewed more than 40,000 pages of documents and interviewed many witnesses. She said her investigation had led to other possible defendants whom she didn’t identify. Worthy said her team of prosecutors on the case includes Lisa Lindsey, Robert Moran, Athina Siringas, Robert Spada and Timothy Baughman.

Worthy’s investigation began after the Detroit 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.

Although Kilpatrick apologized for his conduct in a televised appearance with his wife, Carlita, in late January, he has blamed the media for his troubles and rejected calls from the city council, Attorney General Mike Cox and city union locals to resign.

Settlement documents the Free Press obtained last month through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the city show that _ contrary to Kilpatrick’s claim that he decided to settle based on advice from friends, advisers and ordinary citizens _ he made peace with the cops after discovering that Stefani had the text messages.

Although Kilpatrick’s lawyers settled the suit with one agreement on Oct. 17, they decided to split it into public and private settlements after the Free Press requested a copy.

The public agreement showed how much the former cops would be paid. The secret agreement, signed by Kilpatrick and Beatty, swore Brown, Nelthrope and Stefani to secrecy about the text messages under threat of forfeiting their settlement proceeds and legal fees.

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.

The scandal is the latest to confront Kilpatrick, a gifted politician who became the youngest mayor in Detroit history when he was elected in 2001 after serving in the state legislature.

But his six-year tenure as mayor has been rocky.

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.

But prominent Detroit criminal lawyer Mark Kriger doesn’t think Webb will succeed on that issue.

“I think the mayor’s legal team faces an uphill battle in trying to keep the text messages out of evidence,” Kriger said, adding that federal courts have watered down the exclusionary rule to the point that is only pertains to police misconduct. “In this case, the messages were disclosed by a private entity pursuant to a subpoena issued by a private party.”

Birmingham, Mich., criminal lawyer Neil Fink said he doesn’t think the matter will be that clear cut. Given the legal talent in the case _ Webb is a former U.S. attorney from Chicago and Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Baughman is a top-notch prosecutor who has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court _ he predicted that the case will be a vigorous legal fight.

“With Baughman on one side and Dan Webb on the other, it’s going to be a real battle of the titans,” Fink said.

John Freeman, a former local and federal prosecutor who practices criminal law in Troy, said it’s time for Beatty to consider cooperating with the prosecutor.

“If I were her lawyer, I’d probably be encouraging her to have a conversation with the prosecutor,” Freeman said. “I’d be recommending that she consider cutting a deal and try to maintain her eligibility to become a lawyer when she graduates from law school.”

Freeman also disagreed with the notion that it would be difficult at trial to place the text messaging devices in the hands of Beatty and the mayor. “Unless they were stolen, who else could possibly have been using them,” Freeman said.

“That argument is like trying to reach for a life preserver that isn’t there,” Freeman said.

Two previous Detroit mayors have been charged with felonies, both after leaving office.

Richard Reading, mayor in 1938-40, was sentenced to 4-{ to 5 years in prison after being charged with conspiring with 80 policemen to protect Detroit’s numbers racket. Louis Miriani, mayor from 1957 to 1962, was sentenced to one year in prison for income tax evasion after leaving office. At the time, he was a member of the city council.

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Detroit Free Press reporters Naomi Patton, Joe Swickard and Jim Schaefer contributed to this article.

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(c) 2008, Detroit Free Press.

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