May 20, 2009


5 lawyers in Kilpatrick saga face ethics charges

By David Ashenfelter, Joe Swickard, M.L. Elrick and Jim Schaefer
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS Updated at 11:27 a.m.
Five lawyers who engineered a secret $8.4-million lawsuit settlement to conceal the text messages that drove Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick out of office have been charged with professional misconduct.
The lawyers – assistant city attorney Valerie Colbert-Osamuede; her ex-boss, former city corporation counsel John E. Johnson; city-retained private lawyers Samuel McCargo and Wilson Copeland II, and Mike Stefani, who represented three cops in lawsuits against the city – were charged with misconduct today by the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission after a 14-month investigation.
The Michigan Attorney Discipline Board, which tries and disciplines lawyers for professional misconduct, released the documents today and set hearings in the case for July 8-14.

Reached this morning, Stefani said he had received the legal papers, but was not yet ready to respond. Among other things, the grievance commission accuses Stefani of committing a criminal misdemeanor, contending that he covered up a felony by agreeing to “conceal irrefutable evidence of Kilpatrick’s perjury in return for” the $8.4-million lawsuit settlement for his police clients.

“We just received this and we’ll be preparing our response,” said defense lawyer Gerald Evelyn, speaking for Johnson.

There was no immediate response from the other lawyers. The five face possible suspension or revocation of their law licenses if they’re found to have committed the misconduct.

Robert Agacinski, head of the Attorney Grievance Commission, said the charges were the result “in the most part of very good lawyers confusing their duty to the people of Detroit, the City Council and the Office of Mayor with the individual, Kwame Kilpatrick.”

The charges mark a chapter in the scandal, but do not close the book, Agacinski said.

“With testimony and discovery there may be more insights to be gained,” he said.

Their cases will be handled by three-lawyer panels appointed by the discipline board.

The charges grew out of a 2007 whistle-blower trial in which former Detroit cops accused Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, of forcing them from their jobs in 2003 after the officers began asking questions about a never-proven wild party at the mayoral Manoogian Mansion and alleged misconduct involving the mayor’s security team.

A jury awarded two of the cops $6.5 million in September 2007. Although Kilpatrick vowed to appeal, he abruptly settled the suit and a second one for $8.4 million in October 2007, hours after learning that Stefani had obtained a copy of text messages showing Kilpatrick and Beatty had lied at trial when they denied having an extramarital affair. Stefani planned to make the text messages public in court papers justifying his request for legal fees from the trial.

After the Free Press requested a copy of the settlement under the Freedom of Information Act, the lawyers tore up the original agreement and created two new ones – one secret and the other public – to conceal the existence of the messages. As part of the agreement, Stefani agreed to turn over his copy of the text messages and not publicly disclose their existence.

Detroit’s City Council then approved the $8.4-million settlement, without ever being told by the city lawyers about the text messages or the existence of the secret agreement.

A Wayne County judge last year ordered the lawyers to divulge the secret agreement in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Free Press.

Here are the details of what the lawyers are accused of:

Colbert-Osamuede is charged with five counts of professional misconduct, including concealing the secret agreement from the city council; engaging in a conflict of interest after learning that the mayor’s interests conflicted with those of the council; lying to a judge about the existence of the messages; obstructing the Free Press in its FOIA lawsuit to obtain the agreement, and lying to the grievance commission about whether she and McCargo ever discussed the newspaper’s FOIA suit.

Johnson is charged with two counts: hiding the secret agreement from the city council and continuing to conceal the agreement from the Free Press and the court after the Free Press sued for the document.

McCargo, Kilpatrick’s private lawyer in the whistle-blower case, is charged with covering up Kilpatrick’s and Beatty’s perjury, hiding evidence and making false statements to the AGC in its investigation. He also is accused of not reporting misconduct by other attorneys.

The alleged cover-up of Kilpatrick’s perjury is a criminal misdemeanor, the AGC said. While the commission made the accusation of a crime, it does not have authority to criminally charge lawyers.

Copeland, a private lawyer whom the law department hired to help represent the city in the whistle-blower suit, is charged with failing to advise the city council about the secret agreement even though he helped draft it.

Stefani is charged with five counts including instructing Skytel, the city’s Mississippi-based text message provider, to send the messages to him rather than the judge who presided over the whistle-blower trial, despite the judge’s repeated order that he wanted to see any text messages first before deciding whether they would be released to Stefani. Stefani is also accused of failing to notify the grievance commission about “irrefutable evidence of Kilpatrick’s perjury.”

The misconduct charges against the lawyers do not recommend any specific disciplinary action.

The grievance commission previously cleared three other lawyers in its probe: city attorney Ellen Ha, who said she was kept in the dark about the agreements; Deputy State Treasurer Valdemar Washington, then a Flint lawyer who was called in to help facilitate a settlement of the whistle-blower suit; and Stefani partner Mike Rivers, who helped represent the cops in the whistle-blower case.

The status of a 10th lawyer who was investigated, William Mitchell III, remains unclear. Mitchell had traveled to SkyTel headquarters at Kilpatrick’s behest to find out why the company had released the mayor’s text messages to Stefani. After the trip, Mitchell took a folder believed to contain the messages to Kilpatrick and later to a high-profile criminal lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area. Mitchell was not charged in the legal papers released this morning.

Mitchell did not immediately respond to a call and e-mail requesting comment.

Kilpatrick and Beatty pleaded guilty last year to obstruction of justice for lying in the whistle-blower case and were sentenced to 120 days in prison. Kilpatrick agreed to resign, surrender his law license and pay $1-million restitution to the city. Beatty, who resigned in February 2008 after the scandal broke, agreed to pay $100,000 restitution.

Kilpatrick was released from jail in February and took a job with Compuware and lives in Southlake, Texas. Beatty was released in March.

After details of the secret agreement became public, legal experts said some lawyers in the scandal seemed more interested in protecting Kilpatrick’s reputation than safeguarding the city’s interests and keeping the Detroit City Council informed about the reasons for settling a multimillion-dollar case.
Experts said lawyers involved in the settlement talks were required to notify legal authorities upon learning that Kilpatrick, a lawyer, had lied in court or engaged in other misconduct.
Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER: dashenfelter@freepress.com. Contact JOE SWICKARD: 313-222-8769 or jswickard@freepress.com.




All of them look dirty. Andy Linn, Mischievous and all of you others running for Charter Commission, I hope you see that John Johnson, the former Corporation Counsel and one of the five facing charges, is running to be a Charter Commissioner.

You gotta love this city.