Motown Smackdown

It took Eliot Spitzer all of two days to resign after he was caught for cavorting with a call girl. In Detroit that feels like a New York minute. Two months into his own sex scandal, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is preparing for a Motown Showdown as he fights new charges. In one corner is Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who on Monday unsealed a 12-count indictment against the mayor and Christine Beatty, his former chief of staff whose sexy text messages appear to reveal an adulterous affair the two denied under oath. In the other corner is Kilpatrick, 37, who is the first Detroit mayor ever to be charged with a crime while in office. Sure, he faces 80 years in jail if convicted on all of the eight counts he faces, which include perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and misconduct in office. But Kilpatrick vowed to keep swinging in what is shaping up to be a bruising battle that could last into 2009—when he'll be up for re-election. "There will be a full airing of all the facts in this case," Kilpatrick promised at a press conference Monday, before turning himself in for fingerprinting and booking, "that will result in my full and complete vindication of all that has been laid before you."

First to enter the ring Monday was Worthy, a blunt-talking prosecutor who has had a testy relationship with the mayor. In a 40-minute press conference that sounded like an opening argument, she invoked Teddy Roosevelt and Lady Justice to damn the mayor's actions as a betrayal of the public trust. "This was not an investigation focused on lying about sex," she said. "The public trust was violated."

Last summer Kilpatrick and Beatty hotly denied that they had an affair in testimony in a whistleblower's lawsuit brought by two former cops who had been ousted after investigating the mayor's security detail, which could have uncovered the clandestine couple. After losing that trial and vowing to appeal, Kilpatrick suddenly reversed course in October, when an attorney for the whistleblowers revealed he'd obtained text messages that contradicted Kilpatrick's and Beatty's sworn denials. (A sample: "I've been dreaming all day about having you all to myself for three days," Kilpatrick texted Beatty on his city-issued pager in 2002. "Relaxing, laughing, talking, sleeping and making love.") Kilpatrick settled the lawsuit for $9 million in city money in exchange for destroying the text messages, but they came to light anyway when the Detroit Free Press obtained them in January.

Initially Kilpatrick was contrite, offering a public apology for unspecified transgressions in a live telecast from his church, with wife Carlita by his side. But more recently he has turned combative, invoking the N word during his state of the city speech this month as he condemned what he called a "lynch-mob mentality." Now Kilpatrick is rolling out his high-powered defense attorney, Daniel Webb, who represented former Illinois governor George Ryan in a racketeering trial he lost last year. Webb wasted little time building on Kilpatrick's assertion that he's the target of a "hate-driven, bigoted assault." Webb accused Worthy of "selective prosecution" because, he contends, there is no other example of charges brought against someone for perjury in a civil trial in Wayne County. "That certainly raises issues," he said, "which I intend to pursue before the trial judge."

Legal experts say the selective prosecution defense normally only applies to groups that have been discriminated against, like African-Americans or gays. Politicians aren't normally considered such a group. Kilpatrick is African-American, but so too is Worthy. Barack Obama might be trying to elevate the national discussion on America's racial divisions, but Kilpatrick has shown he's willing to play to that deep divide in this metropolitan area, where 82 percent of the city's population is black while an equal share of the suburbs is white. "If they need to play the race card for an acquittal or a hung jury, they will," says Detroit criminal lawyer Jerome Sabbota. "As ugly as this has been, it's going to get worse."

The battle over Kilpatrick's tabloid tale has caused a state of stasis in the city with the nation's highest unemployment rate, one of America's highest murder rates and schools that graduate just 32 percent their students. Those factors led Forbes magazine to recently name Detroit America's most miserable city. But there is precious little focus on those issues while Textgate commands the headlines and the mayor's attention. "This is a huge distraction," said Detroit City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr., who would replace the mayor if he were convicted of any of the felony charges he faces. "And it appears this is going to be a long and bumpy ride for the city."