Jurors were urged Friday to send Kwame Kilpatrick, his father Bernard and contractor Bobby Ferguson to prison for “breathtaking corruption” that cheated taxpayers across Metro Detroit, reports Robert Snell in the Detroit News.
Jury deliberations will begin in earnest Tuesday in federal court following a five-month trial featuring testimony from more than 80 witnesses in one of the country’s largest public corruption cases in decades.
Taxpayers across Metro Detroit are the real victims of Kwame Kilpatrick’s corrupt tenure and the time has come for him to be punished, a federal prosecutor said today.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Chutkow offered an impassioned response to an emotional closing argument given one day earlier by Bobby Ferguson’s defense lawyer Gerald Evelyn.
Throughout this trial, it has become completely clear that Mayor Kilpatrick and his accomplices, his partners, used the public that he was elected to serve,” Chutkow told jurors.
Mr. Kilpatrick was elected by the citizens of Detroit to represent their interests, not the defendants,” he continued. “To look out for their welfare, not his own wallet. He was not elected to quietly stuff half a million dollars into his bank accounts, so he could make sure Bobby Ferguson got $83 million in revenues, so he could make sure his father was a middleman on city deals. He was entrusted to act for the people of Detroit.
