Kwame Kilpatrick and Derrick Miller
Derrick Miller first met Kwame Kilpatrick in Mrs. Cunningham’s ninth-grade English class at Cass Tech High School. They forged a friendship. He helped Kilpatrick get elected and worked in Kilpatrick’s inner circle at city hall along with another classmate of theirs, Christine Beatty, who would eventually become a central figure in the text messaging scandal.
“Other than my wife and Christine, I trusted no one more than Zeke,” Kilpatrick wrote in his 2011 autobiography. Eventually, they had a falling out and the friendship died.
Miller worked as the chief administrative officer for Kilpatrick from 2002-2005 and then as chief information officer the following couple years.
In 2010, he was indicted for bribery along with Kilpatrick, contractor Bobby Ferguson, Kilpatrick's dad Bernard and ex-water department head Victor Mercado. But instead of going to trial, he pleaded guilty and agreed to turn on his close pal and testify as a star government witness.
He admitted receiving $115,000 in kickbacks from a real estate company in connection with lease and sale of Detroit properties and failing to report to the IRS $568,000 in “consulting fees” from a real estate company that the Detroit pension fund invested in. He also talked about giving kickbacks to Kilpatrick and passing on a $10,000 bribe to him in a bathroom.
Under his plea, the federal sentencing guidelines called for him to get no more than 10 years in prison.
Now, it looks as if that testimony is going to pay off at his sentencing set for Thursday.
The U.S. Attorney's Office, in a sentencing memorandum filed last Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, is asking the judge to depart downward from the 10 years and is suggesting he get no more than 3 years and 4 months in prison.
"The government moves for a downward departure...because of his extraordinary assistance in the prosecution of a public corruption case of historic importance to this region," the government wrote. The government also noted that he was remorseful.
"His truthful, accurate and well corroborated testimony provided very significant evidence of guilt of his co-defendants, Kwame Kilpatrick and Bobby Ferguson."
The government conceded that he was no Boy Scout and should be punished. But prosecutors spelled out how difficult it was to penetrate the Kilpatrick inner circle because the mayor was do distrustful and worried about the FBI listening in on his conversations.
That is why, the government said, Miller was so valuable.
"He was a handpicked member of a corrupt mayor's inner circle."
The government added:
"Miller’s decision to cooperate with the government took a substantial personal toll on him. He testified for five days, enduring three days of withering cross-examination challenging his loyalty to Kilpatrick, his marriage, even his religious faith.”
Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years. His pal Bobby Ferguson got 21 years. Kilpatrick's dad Bernard Kilpatrick got 15 months and Victor Mercado, the head of the water department, who pleaded guilty last year in the middle of the trial, was sentenced last week to 8 months in a halfway house.
A few years ago, Miller and his wife moved to suburban D.C., where he worked as a consultant. He and his wife have since split up.
A friend of Miller's, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Deadline Detroit last October:
“People who had no love for Kwame, loved Derrick. It’s impossible not to like the guy. People really trusted him and had high hopes for him. It was so shocking that he allowed himself to get into that.”
