By Joel Thurtell
For three hours, sanity replaced the spite that governs the
Four pages of Freep Kwamegate coverage. Wow! Joel Thurtell photo.
ever-more-depressing courtroom saga of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Despite the histrionics of an assistant Wayne County prosecuting attorney, Wayne Circuit Judge Leonard Townsend flatly stated in court Thursday, August 14, that so far, Kwame hasn’t been convicted of a crime.
What a revelation!
This may come as news to readers of the Detroit Free Press, accustomed as they are to a constant drumbeat of stories that either presume the mayor’s guilty or round up the usual suspects to urge him to quit. I’ve written before about the newspaper’s rush to judgment in “Hang ‘Em High” and “Cart before the nag: Kwame’s innocent until…”
Townsend’s moment of clarity (he told the mayor to take off the electronic tether he’d been subjected to after he traveled to Windsor on city business in violation of another judge’s order) was duly trashed by Freepsters with a Page One subhead: “JUDGE WHO REMOVED IT IS CRITICIZED, OVERRULED.”
Not long after Townsend ruled that Kwame could walk without being connected by radio to the courthouse, a lower court judge insisted hizzoner put the pager-like device back on.
The Free Press chose to commemorate the event with — as the paper bragged on Page One — “4 PAGES OF COVERAGE: MORE ON FREEP.COM.”
Obviously, the editorial staff at the Freep didn’t listen to me — in a post August 15, I derided the paper for printing five stories about Kwame in a recent issue.
Four whole pages! Wow.
Drumbeat of bad news for Kwame. Joel Thurtell photo.
Much of that territory is occupied by glitzy graphics, but still, it’s a load. Add it to the coverage we’ve seen since the Free Press broke the story last January, and it’s quite a mountain of newsprint.
Back to Townsend, a judge who’s apparently not into kicking corpses. The judge cut to the marrow of the issue: Why put someone on a tether? Well, because you’re concerned they might not show up for trial.
“I don’t think that this gentleman has any intention of not coming to court,” Townsend said. “The only place that I think of that he can go and not be back to court is probably Callisto or Ganymede, which are really satellites orbiting the planet of Saturn.”
The Free Press duly noted that the judge had the planet wrong — Callisto and Ganymede are in orbit around Jupitier, not Saturn.
But Saturn or Jupiter, Townsend had a point. Kwame is hunkered down, trying to weather the storm. An escape to some country that won’t extradite him is out of the question. The tether is a taunt, a judicial slur meant to humiliate the man.
When the assistant prosecutor, Lisa Lindsey, tried to object, Townsend cut her off.
Guess she was pissed.
The Free Press described her as “Lindsey, her voice rising,” and “Lindsey, clearly exercised by this point.”
“I think you are losing your compusure,” Townsend told her. “No one has been found guilty of anything. Let’s not trash the Constitution.”
(By the way, I can’t help interjecting that we are all completely reliant on the newspaper’s report of this exchange, because the record of this and all other Wayne County Circuit Court cases is not available to the public as required by the state Constitution, statute and common law. Since lightning struck the courthouse June 27, the records have been kept in a secret place and public accountability won’t be restored at least until September 1. “Let’s not trash the Constitution.” How ironic that the very record of the judge’s remark can’t be read, contrary to the state Constitution.)
But the judge is right. What a notion — Kwame is presumed innocent till proven guilty.
It’s a point I’ve been preaching for weeks. I’m offended that newspaper writers seem to have forgotten this fundamental legal fact in our democracy. Despite the pileup of text messages that seem to incriminate him, Kwame so far has not been convicted of a crime. His trial likely won’t come till next year. Yet we have the Detroit City Council and the governor of Michigan set to hold hearings on whether he should be removed from office. Evidence will be presented to prove he’s unfit for office. That evidence will be similar if not identical to evidence the county prosecutor introduces to find him guilty of felonies. If he’s guilty, he could be sent to prison.
Kwame Kilpatrick is the mayor, but he’s also an individual. The U.S. and Michigan Constitutions guarantee the rights of individuals to a fair trial. That includes the right not to incriminate themselves or be incriminated by phony pre-trial proceedings with bogus judicial trappings.
Before Kwame can be tried in a real court (hopefully with records restored to public access), he will be tried in two pseudo-courts, first by a City Council operating under the cloud of a federal criminal investiation of four of its own members, and then by a governor who may be under political pressure to clear Kwame out of office, hubba-hubba, chop chop.
Four pages of coverage will be nothing compared to what the media dose out for these sham hearings.
How the man can get a fair trial is a mystery to me.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
It seemed like Detroit’s mayor had become everybody’s butt. Even Mike Cox, the Michigan attorney general who doesn’t like to charge public officials with wrongdoing, has jumped the mayor and who denied the existence of a mayoral party, the mayor of Detroit who’s hanging onto his office despite widespread calls for his departuremy “Hang ‘Em High” post and and an earlier post, “Cart before the nag: Kwame’s innocent until…” both of which
the paper today (July 3, 2008) stated that “The case began when the Free Press discovered text messages showing Kilpatrick and Beatty committed perjury during a whistle-blower lawsuit last year.â€
