Detroit mayor charged with perjury
Updated: 2008-03-25 10:58
Kilpatrick is married with three children. Beatty was married at the time and has two children.
The city eventually agreed to pay $8.4 million to the two officers and a third former officer. Some of the charges brought against the mayor on Monday accuse him of agreeing to the settlement in an effort to keep the text messages from becoming public.
"I'm madly in love with you," Kilpatrick wrote on Oct. 3, 2002.
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On Oct. 16, 2002, Kilpatrick wrote: "I've been dreaming all day about having you all to myself for 3 days. Relaxing, laughing, talking, sleeping and making love."
All of the charges against the mayor are felonies. Under the city charter, a felony conviction would mean the mayor's immediate expulsion.
In announcing the charges, Worthy delivered a 14-minute lecture on the oath that all the witnesses take, and how the criminal justice system relies on people to tell the truth. "Even children understand that lying is wrong," she said.
"If a witness lies, innocent people can go to jail or prison, people can literally get away with murder, civil litigants who deserve money may not get it or may get money they don't deserve," she said. "And lying cannot be tolerated even if a judge or jury sees through it."
The City Council asked Kilpatrick to step down last week, but he refused, and the council has no authority to remove him in the meantime.
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, has the power to remove local officials for misconduct, but spokeswoman Liz Boyd said Granholm believes "it's important the legal process be allowed to work," and doesn't plan to get involved at this point.
Council President Ken Cockrel Jr., who was among those who called on Kilpatrick to resign last week, would succeed him if he left office. "On a personal level, certainly it's a tragedy for him, although one could argue that he set himself up for it. The moves he made led to this," Cockrel said.
The mayor's attorney said he will ask a judge to prevent the text messages from being admitted as evidence. Federal law prohibits the text messages from being produced by the city's communications provider, SkyTel, Webb said.
"I am as certain as I stand here that the initial production of those text messages in fact were illegal under the law," Webb said. Webb is a former federal prosecutor who was the chief defense attorney in the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who is now in prison.
Controversy has surrounded Kilpatrick since his 2001 election. Embraced by many Detroit residents for his boldness and confidence, Kilpatrick, then 31, embodied the new black politician and wore a diamond stud earring that helped earn him the unofficial title as the "Hip-Hop Mayor." His mother is Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
During his first four years, he caused a furor over his use of his city-issued credit card for expensive travel, the city's lease of a luxury Lincoln Navigator for his wife and unsubstantiated allegations of a wild party involving his security team and strippers at the mayor's mansion.
At the start of his second term, Kilpatrick vowed to not make the same mistakes and announced a residential redevelopment along Detroit's dormant riverfront, hosted a Super Bowl that shone a light on the city's renewal efforts and initiated other improvements. He had been expected to seek a third term in 2009.
"What we are witnessing is the 21st-century rerun of a classic Greek tragedy: fallen heroes, lost opportunities, unfulfilled promise," said Republican L. Brooks Patterson, county executive in neighboring Oakland County.
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