DETROIT — Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's third trip to court in a week turned into a victory Tuesday when a judge threw out prosecutors' claim that a visit with his sister violated the terms of his bail in an assault case.
Judge Ronald Giles agreed with the mayor's lawyers that a no-contact order didn't include Ayanna Kilpatrick, who is listed as a witness in the assault case.
“I don't see the issue,” the judge said. “I really don't. There isn't an issue.”
After the hearing, defence attorney Dan Webb denounced the prosecution claim as “truly ridiculous” and a product of “hysteria.”
“You've got prosecutors and media overreacting to everything this man does,” Mr. Webb said.
Mr. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, were charged in March with perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office in connection to their testimony in a civil trial. Text messages contradict their denial of an affair, a key point in the civil trial last year.
A group of Detroit-area Baptist pastors met Tuesday and publicly urged the mayor to consider resigning. Mr. Kilpatrick's spokeswoman Denise Tolliver had no comment.
Separately, Mr. Kilpatrick's former pastor, the Rev. Edgar Vann of Second Ebenezer Church, called for him to step down.
“Don't hold us hostage. ... Enough is enough!” Mr. Vann wrote in an op-ed page column in The Detroit News.
Last week, Judge Giles had sent the mayor to jail overnight in a separate perjury case after learning he had travelled to Windsor, Ontario, in July without notifying authorities, a condition of his release on bail.
Mr. Kilpatrick was released Friday.
That same day, the mayor was charged with assaulting two investigators who were trying to deliver a subpoena at his sister's house in July in the perjury case.
The state attorney general's office said in a court filing that the mayor had been ordered to have no contact with witnesses in the assault case.
Prosecutors said Mr. Kilpatrick violated that condition because he and Ayanna Kilpatrick were together Saturday at the home of their mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
“Clearly, a court can prevent contact with relatives,” said Doug Baker of the Michigan attorney general's office, which is handling the assault case against Kilpatrick. “That happens all the time.”
Defence lawyer James Thomas said that Magistrate Renee McDuffee had clarified Friday that Mr. Kilpatrick could have contact with his sister. Mr. Thomas argued the mayor should be able to have the support of his family.
“I think this is a tempest in a teapot,” Mr. Thomas said.
Mr. Giles said Tuesday the no-contact order was for the two investigators involved in the altercation.
However, he ordered the mayor not to contact another woman on the prosecution's list of potential witnesses. Mr. Baker told the court that the woman had expressed fear about co-operating with prosecutors. The state attorney general's office won't comment on her role in the case, spokesman Rusty Hills said.
Outside court, Mr. Baker said Ayanna Kilpatrick has refused to talk to authorities about what happened on her porch between the mayor and the investigators July 24.
