Back in 9th grade I remember a teacher yelling me and a classmate as we laughed uncontrollably. We were watching a movie about a 1960s psychological experiment at Yale on peoples’ willingness to obey authority.
It was called the Milgram Experiment. A male volunteer was assigned to be a teacher. A middle-aged decoy, who sat in another room, was the "learner" or student. The teacher asked questions through an intercom, and each time the learner gave a wrong answer, the teacher delivered an electric shock. The voltage increased with each incorrect answer. The learner really wasn’t getting a shock, but the volunteer didn’t know that.
Before long, the learner shouted “ouch” after each shock (it was actually a recording) and complained about a heart condition. Some of the volunteers refused to continue, even after a facilitator ordered them to. But others, albeit hesitant, kept delivering shock after shock as directed. They felt pressure from the facilitator. They were just following orders.
I’m reminded of that film as the Kwame Kilpatrick public corruption trial begins on Friday. Four people are standing trial, including Victor Mercado, the former water department boss, who claims that he felt pressure from the Mayor, and was just following orders. Besides Kilpatrick and Mercado, co-defendants include contractor Bobby Ferguson and Kilpatrick’s dad Bernard Kilpatrick.
The feds charged that Mercado, 61, helped delay or cancel city contracts, at the behest of the mayor, so contractors would be forced to give Kilpatrick’s friend Bobby Ferguson a piece of the action or kickbacks. Ferguson then allegedly spread the love to the mayor and his father.
Mercado is trying to play the innocent, an “unwitting victim.”
His attorneys say he never got a dime, had no idea about the payoffs, and “had no discretion to ignore the Mayor’s commands.” They tried unsuccessfully to have him tried separately.
Nonsense to all that, say the feds. By indicting him, the feds are saying he could have stepped up to the plate, resisted, quit his job, gone to authorities and exposed the illegalities. Granted, government, private businesses and and the military wouldn’t function if everyone challenged their bosses. But sometimes it’s the right thing to do.
The feds are expected to argue that even though Mercado may have never received kickbacks, his $240,000 a year salary was incentive enough to follow Kilpatrick’s orders.
His attorneys have argued in court papers that Mercado “was not afraid to be fired by the Mayor” because his contract would have entitled him to one year severance pay. Plus, they claim that Kilpatrick would have had to explain the firing to U.S. Judge John Feikens, who was overseeing the water department under a court order.
The other day I called that classmate who was laughing with me back in 9th grade. It was Adolph Mongo, a former consultant for Kilpatrick and former staffer for Mayor Coleman A. Young. He remembered seeing the film. And he had something to say about Mercado and the price of following orders.
“He was a good soldier,’ Mongo says. “If he thought the person he was working for was a criminal he should have left. He ran the largest department in the city. He’s not stupid. He has to deal with it. Now he wants to run from it. It’s kind of late. “
Frankly, this time, following orders just doesn’t seem so funny.
