Judge stops effort to block text messages

[Mugu]

BY DAVID ASHENFELTER • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

A Wayne County judge today shot down another attempt by the Detroit Law Department to block the release of electronic messages and documents in the text messaging scandal involving Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Advertisement

“I don’t think there is any dispute that these are public records,” Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Colombo said in ordering the “official” production of text messages that were the subject of a Jan. 29 Free Press story which revealed that the mayor and then-chief of staff Christine Beatty lied at a police whistle-blower trial last August when they denied having an extramarital affair.

The Free Press published the story after obtaining the text messages the mayor and Beatty exchanged on her city-issued pager in 2002-03. After the story broke, the Free Press went to court and persuaded Colombo to order the release of documents showing that the mayor had engineered a secret whistle-blower settlement to keep the text messages secret.

Colombo also ordered the mayor’s office manager, Bobbie Tyler, to submit to a Free Press deposition to determine what kind of text messaging devices the mayor and Beatty may have used since Aug. 1, 2007 – during the police whistle-blower trial – and whether the messages were archived.


Read complete article at:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/NEWS01/80321020