Bwwwwaaaaa: a post after 9:30am??? It's a vampire!

Seriously though, while I agree Kilpatrick needs to go, I sort of disagree with the "One thing I learned a long time ago was that you cannot simultaneously accept responsibility for your actions and blame others for the consequences of those actions." part. I agree insofar as, pragmatically, doing this is very unlikely to ever fly as a PR tactic to mollify those that want an apology.

The thing is though, I think as a general point, it almost always blame for all sorts of things is shared: social and political events are almost always chain causality, not tracable back to one person or action.

This certainly doesn't apply at all to Kilpatrick's case, because I'm not sure I see how anyone that did anything wrong at all OTHER than him. It's just a general point against what was a general statement: way too often in scandals and screwups, when people defend themselves as not being 100% to blame, they're often right. No one ever wants to hear it from them of course: it's something that only other people can safely say.

Posted by: Bad | March 25, 2008 8:49 PM

1. In some fairness here, I will point out a remark made by former prosecutor Jennine Pirro from Westchester County, NY, on the VanSusteran program. Ms. Pirro said that prosecutors are generally very reluctant to bring perjury charges against individuals for lying in civil cases because if they did so, they would be spending all the resources of their offices prosecuting such cases. Obviously, prosecutors have more important cases involving violent crime to concern themselves with.

2. In this regard, I would point to comments made by California attorney Gloria Allred after the O. J. Simpson civil case in which she demanded that Mr. Simpson be charged with perjury, based on what she considered to be lies told under oath. Of course, the Los Angeles District Attorney had no desire to, in effect, retry the O. J. Simpson case yet again and declined to do so.

All of this comes under the heading of prosecutorial discretion as no DAs' office has the resources to try all possible cases of alleged criminal activity.

Posted by: SLC | March 26, 2008 8:56 AM

Now if he could just be convinced to resign now so the city can heal and move on. Unfortunately, his "apology" and actions indicate otherwise. This egotistical nightmare of a mayor earned this indictment and the only victim here is the city of Detroit.

Posted by: JoH | March 26, 2008 9:39 AM

SLC:

Normally I'd agree with you that if prosecutors don't normally go after perjury in civil cases, they shouldn't go after it for an elected official, either. On the other hand, this wasn't just any civil case; the heart of the matter at hand was illegal conduct by an elected official.

Honestly, the obstruction and misuse of office charges are far more important to me - but they might as well charge the perjury, too, since they're already prosecuting him. (On the other hand again, does it make a difference to the perjury case that the jury apparently didn't buy a word of it?)

As far as his defense - I had to laugh the other day when I heard Kilpatrick talking about how he's going to be "completely exonerated". Sure, if they're successful in getting the text messages excluded, he's likely to be acquitted - but there's a far cry between "acquitted because the smoking gun was excluded as evidence" and "completely exonerated", y'know?

Posted by: Cathy W | March 26, 2008 7:00 PM