Almost a year in to his lengthy prison term, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is asking a federal appeals court to toss his conviction and grant a new trial, Tresa Baldas reports in the Free Press.
Kilpatrick, sentenced last Oct. 10 to 28 years for public corruption, argues in court documents filed Wednesday that he didn't get a fair trial in 2012-13 for three reasons:
■ He was forced to go to trial with a lawyer, James Thomas, he didn't want – and shouldn't have had – due to a conflict of interest.
■ The nearly $4.7 million in he was ordered to pay in restitution was not authorized under federal law.
■ The judge erred in allowing two FBI agents to offer their opinions to jurors about what Kilpatrick's and others' text messages meant and how texts and phone calls showed the ex-mayor was involved in crooked contracts.
Baldas writes:
The 80-page filing focused heavily on Kilpatrick's longtime defense attorney, Thomas, who Kilpatrick tried to get thrown off the case at the start of his trial, citing a conflict of interest: Thomas and his associate were working for a law firm that was suing Kilpatrick for the same alleged crimes of which Thomas was defending him.
