{"id":20021,"date":"2013-03-14T13:28:24","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T17:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=20021"},"modified":"2013-03-14T13:28:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T17:28:24","slug":"kwame-kilpatrick-found-guilty-on-federal-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=20021","title":{"rendered":"Kwame Kilpatrick Found Guilty On Federal Charges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DETROIT\u00a0 \u2014 Former Detroit Mayor <strong>Kwame Kilpatrick<\/strong> was convicted Monday of corruption charges, ensuring a return to prison for a man once among the nation\u2019s youngest big-city leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Jurors convicted <strong>Kilpatrick<\/strong> of a raft of crimes, including a racketeering conspiracy charge that carries a maximum punishment of 20 years behind bars. He was portrayed during a five-month trial as an unscrupulous politician who took bribes, rigged contracts and lived far beyond his means while in office until fall 2008.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kilpatrick<\/strong> wore a surprised, puzzled look at times as U. S. District <strong>Judge Nancy Edmunds<\/strong> read the jury\u2019s verdict: guilty of 24 charges, not guilty on three and no consensus on three more. <strong>Kilpatrick<\/strong> declined to speak to reporters as he left the courthouse.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors said <strong>Kilpatrick<\/strong> ran a \u201cprivate profit machine\u201d out of Detroit\u2019s City Hall. The government presented evidence to show he got a share of the spoils after ensuring that <strong>Bobby Ferguson\u2019s<\/strong> excavating company was awarded millions in work from the water department.<\/p>\n<p>Business owners said they were forced to hire <strong>Ferguson<\/strong> as a subcontractor or risk losing city contracts. Separately, fundraiser <strong>Emma Bell <\/strong>said she gave <strong>Kilpatrick<\/strong> more than $200,000 as his personal cut of political donations, pulling cash from her bra during private meetings. A high-ranking aide, <strong>Derrick Miller<\/strong>, told jurors that he often was the middle man, passing bribes from others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DETROIT\u00a0 \u2014 Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted Monday of corruption charges, ensuring a return to prison for a man once among the nation\u2019s youngest big-city leaders. Jurors convicted Kilpatrick of a raft of crimes, including a racketeering conspiracy charge that carries a maximum punishment of 20 years behind bars. He was portrayed during [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}