After jailing, Detroit mayor faces strong pressure to resign

On August 7, Kilpatrick was sent to the Wayne County Jail for violating the travel restrictions on a bond, which had allowed him to remain free while awaiting trial on multiple felony counts, including perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice. After spending the night in jail, Kilpatrick was arraigned on two additional charges of assault, bringing the total to 10 felony counts.

The Detroit Free Press recounted the extraordinary events. In a seven-hour span Friday, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick endured a surreal journey that found him pleading to get out of jail in the morning, facing a pair of new felony charges shortly afterward, standing glumly for an eerie video arraignment in the afternoon and finally arriving back at city hall wearing jeans, a dress shirt and electronic tether.

The ignominious stay in jail is the latest blow to the mayor whose political career truly began to unravel in late March. At that time, he was charged with various felonies, stemming from his decision to have the city of Detroitone of the poorest in the nationpay $8.4 million in hush money to several former policemen whose eyewitness accounts of Kilpatricks behavior would have been politically damaging.

Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, were charged with lying under oath during civil lawsuits brought by three policemen, who claimed they had been fired to cover up an affair between the mayor and Beatty, his longtime aide. In January 2008, the Detroit Free Press published extensive excerpts from text messages between the two, which apparently confirmed both the affair and the retaliatory character of the three cops firing.

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