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Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick sent to jail
Kilpatrick apologized this morning to 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles for the unauthorized trip he made to nearby Windsor, Canada, and pointed out that he "ran in, made a presentation . . . and I ran back." The ruling, though shocking to prosecutors and allies of the mayor alike, comes after months of the mayor's defiant and sometimes flippant attitude toward his legal woes. Both the mayor and his former top aide, Christine Beatty, testified during a "public whistle-blower" trial last year that they did not have a relationship. But the Detroit Free Press in January released racy snippets from more than 14,000 text messages sent to and from Beatty's city-provided pager in 2002 and 2003, including one Kilpatrick sent to Beatty in 2002 that read "I'm madly in love with you." Kilpatrick now faces felony charges -- including perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice --for attempting to hide his extramarital relationship with Beatty, who also was charged with seven felonies. (Earlier this week, the pair both waived their right to a preliminary hearing previously scheduled for next month.) As the case has moved toward trial, Kilpatrick has refused to step down from his mayoral office and, at times, acted as if nothing was wrong. Kilpatrick's travels have come up before. This spring, after Kilpatrick and his wife flew to Dallas for a meeting with church officials, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office asked the court to add travel restrictions as conditions of the mayor's bond. A judge ruled that when Kilpatrick needed to travel for city business reasons, he simply needed to make a phone call to the court -- and then he was free to travel worldwide. But last week, Giles revoked the mayor's right to make any trips without a court hearing, after a Wayne County Sheriff's deputy testified that he was physically assaulted by the mayor and suffered a fractured hip. Posted by: Fred 2008-08-08 |
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