The Motor City is in for some entertainment and potentially a long long stretch of bad publicity.
Why? Because ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and four others charged in a federal public corruption indictment may not go before a jury — if they choose that route — until the summer of 2012, the Detroit News reported. That means the case will provide plenty fodder for the media for some time to come in a city that is struggling in every way.
The Detroit News reported that no trial date will be set until after a April 13 pretrial conference. Veteran Detroit attorney Gerald Evelyn, who represents co-defendant Bobby Ferguson, said the government proposed a trial date of January 2012.
“The government took seven years investigating and they want us to prepare in a few minutes,” Evelyn told reporters, according to the News.
On Monday, Kilpatrick stood mute during his arraignment, the News reported.
Kilpatrick, 40, once dubbed the “hip hop mayor”, is currently in prison, serving time for failing to pay $1 million in restitution after he pleaded in 2008 to obstruction of justice charges for lying about an affair with his chief of staff and about the discharge of a police official while under oath during a whistle-blower lawsuit in state court. The lies were revealed in Kilpatrick’s text messages the Detroit Free Press published.
He was sentenced in May to 18 months to 5 years in prison for violating his probation.
A month later, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on 19 federal counts including mail fraud, wire fraud, tax evasion and filing a false tax return. He was Detroit mayor from 2002 to 2008.
Last month, Kilpatrick was indicted along with his father Bernard Kilpatrick, city contractor Bobby Ferguson, former top Kilpatrick aide Derrick Miller and former water department chief Victor Mercado.
The indictment alleged that the defendants extorted money from municipal contracts and were knee-deep in bribery.
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