Lawyer for Detroit Mayor Seeks to Delay Hearing
In this July 21, 2003 file photo, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, left, listens as Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm addresses a news conference in Detroit. Michigan's governor and Detroit's embattled mayor have had a strained relationship for years and the tension is bound to escalate when she holds a hearing next week to decide whether to remove him from office for misconduct.
(Paul Sancya - AP)
TOOLBOX   Resize
 Save/Share +
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
|
Saturday, August 30, 2008; Page A08
DETROIT, Aug. 29 -- A lawyer for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) asked a judge Friday to freeze next week's hearing that could remove him from office, and accused Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D) of being too biased to preside over the case.
Dan Webb also said the rules for the hearing would greatly hamper Kilpatrick's defense. He asked for a 14-day restraining order to suspend the proceedings, scheduled to start Wednesday.
"There are some very basic rights that clearly have to be applied," Webb told Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Ziolkowski.
The judge said he had planned to go fishing but would work on the case over the holiday weekend and make a ruling Tuesday.
The Detroit City Council is asking Granholm to use her constitutional power to remove Kilpatrick from office for misconduct.
The mayor is accused of misleading council members into approving an $8.4 million settlement with fired police officers. The council says it didn't know the deal included provisions to keep a cover on romantic text messages between Kilpatrick and a woman who was then a top aide.
Kilpatrick's lawyers filed a lawsuit Thursday, asserting that the mayor cannot get a fair hearing from the governor. A key argument: Granholm held a private meeting in May to try to settle Kilpatrick's criminal perjury case and get him to resign.
"The governor is the only person that has the authority to remove him from office. She should have thought of this before she embroiled herself" in talks about a plea deal, Webb said.
In response, the governor's deputy legal counsel said the bias claim is "laughable."
John Wernet said Granholm's role in brokering a settlement is something judges do every day.
"The issue was: Is there middle ground that both parties could live with to serve the interests of justice? Clearly, there wasn't," Wernet said of the spring meeting with Wayne County prosecutors and the mayor's legal team.
Wernet, citing legal precedent, said the court's ability to intervene in a removal hearing is "exceedingly limited."
"This is not a criminal prosecution," he said. "This is an administrative proceeding."
Besides the removal hearing, Kilpatrick faces 10 felony counts in separate perjury and assault cases.
In the first case, he and former top aide Christine Beatty are charged with perjury, conspiracy, misconduct and obstruction of justice. They are accused of lying during the 2007 whistle-blowers' trial about having an extramarital affair and their roles in the firing of a deputy police chief.
Text messages from Beatty's city-issued pager contradicted their testimony.
The other charges stem from allegations that the mayor shoved a prosecutor's investigator into another in July as they were attempting to serve a subpoena in the perjury case to a Kilpatrick friend.
