Detroit’s ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick gets 4 months

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick & Christine Beatty

Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner ordered Detroit’s ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to prison for 4 months. The sentence was announced nine months after a newspaper story was published about text messages that ignited a scandal at City Hall. The ex-mayor would not be given an opportunity for early release.

Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty last month to obstruction of justice, admitting he lied about an affair with his chief of staff while testifying in a civil lawsuit in 2007. He also pleaded no contest to assaulting a sheriff’s detective.

The hearing was moved to a larger courtroom Tuesday to accommodate the news media and spectators.

Kwame Kilpatrick, 38-year-old, left office Sept. 18 after nearly seven years as mayor. "The Wayne County jail, and the cell Mr. Kilpatrick will be staying in, is no country club," Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans said. "It’s a Spartan cell, cinderblock, typical of jail cells."While in prison, he will spend 23 hours a day in a small cinderblock cell, with an hour out for recreation. He will be billed for his stay at $60 a day. Kilpatrick will be housed in a 15-foot-by-10-foot cell, with a toilet, sink, shower and a phone for collect calls. It has a single bed with a thin mattress that hardly looks large enough to hold the 6-foot-4 former football lineman.

The sentence is part of an agreement worked out with prosecutors when Kilpatrick, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice on Sept. 4. He will also serve a concurrent sentence for assaulting a sheriff’s detective.

Kilpatrick admitted to lying while testifying last year in a civil lawsuit filed by former police officers who had accused him of illegally demoting or firing them.

He and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied having an affair, but text messages obtained by a lawyer in the case and later the Detroit Free Press contradicted their claims.

More messages were released last week in Beatty’s criminal case, further embarrassing the pair and revealing that Kilpatrick, married with three children, likely had other paramours.

Kilpatrick, 38, will not mix with other inmates in jail; he is being kept out of the general jail population because of his notoriety, Evans said.

"One of the common threads about having a high-profile prisoner is nobody’s ambivalent," the sheriff said. "Either you love him, you hate him, whatever. … That also involves officers and it also involves other inmates."

Officers working Kilpatrick’s floor will be carefully screened. "We have the obligation to protect the former mayor," Evans said.

There will be no television unless Kilpatrick arranges to have one delivered. Lights go out at 10 p.m.

"He’s not going to be treated any worse. He’s not going to be treated any better than other prisoners," Evans said.