Detroit Mayor Ordered Jailed

Detroit mayor ordered jailed

DETROIT, Michigan (CNN) -- A judge Thursday ordered Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick jailed after determining he violated terms of his bond by taking an unauthorized trip to Canada last month.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick apologized, but a federal judge ordered him jailed for violating terms of his bond.

Kilpatrick, who is facing felony charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct of office, has been free on $75,000 bond. He has been snarled in a public scandal since January, when the Detroit Free Press reported that he had exchanged romantic text messages with his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, indicating the two were involved in an affair.

He and Beatty, testifying last fall in a whistle-blower trial, had denied they had been having an affair.

Kilpatrick attorney Jim Parkman said an immediate appeal is planned. He noted that Kilpatrick's trip "wasn't a personal trip over there to go to Caesar's Palace and play" but a trip on Detroit business.

"He believes it was the right thing to do, and on the spur of the moment, he just went," Parkman told reporters.

Kilpatrick visited Windsor, Ontario, on July 23 to discuss with Windsor's mayor a plan to sell Detroit's half of the tunnel connecting the two cities, according to the Free Press.

Under terms of his bond, Kilpatrick was required to give the court 48 hours' notice for business travel, District Court Judge Ronald Giles noted Thursday.

Kilpatrick apologized for the trip, telling Giles his first priority was taking care of the city.

"I guess the problem I'm having is, I don't think there's too much of anything you do alone," Giles told Kilpatrick. "And even on that day, it's not that you got a telephone call, jumped in your SUV and drove across the bridge or the tunnel. You go to the phone. You made several telephone calls.

"You had to call security. You had to contact the deputy mayor and executive assistant. You had to make arrangements," Giles said. "You don't do anything without making arrangements, and one of those arrangements has to be in relationship to this court."

The judge said that last week, in addressing another violation by Kilpatrick, he had made it clear: "Don't come back."

"What matters to me is how the court is perceived," Giles said. "And if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in that seat, what would I do? And there the answer is simple, so I'm going to go back to my original 'keep it simple' ... anybody else sitting in that chair, that's exactly what would happen."

Parkman said he was not surprised by the judge's ruling.

"It did not come as a shock," he said. "The judge, I would say, is his own man."

Wayne County Attorney Kym Worthy issued a statement saying she thinks Giles took appropriate action, "considering (Kilpatrick's) most recent behavior. Judge Giles treated this defendant as any other defendant would have been treated."

Earlier Thursday, Kilpatrick and Beatty waived their preliminary examination and agreed that the case could be forwarded to Wayne County Circuit Court's Criminal Division.

Beatty, who resigned her post after the text messages were made public, is also facing charges. If convicted, both face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Kilpatrick has rejected calls from critics that he resign.