Ex-cops' attorney may face perjury charges over Kilpatrick messages

Doug Guthrie and Christine MacDonald / The Detroit News

Detroit --The lawyer who represented police officers in the whistle-blower lawsuit that exposed former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's lies under oath may himself face perjury charges.

Michael Stefani admitted Thursday he gave copies of the infamous text messages to the Detroit Free Press, bringing to an abrupt halt the Attorney Discipline Board proceedings against the lawyer who represented the police officers who sued Kilpatrick. The revelation could bring more disciplinary charges against Stefani, who already faces punishment for his role in the scandal.

"His admission provides evidence that he provided false statements in two previous sets of testimony and may require investigation of perjury," said Robert Edick, a lawyer acting as prosecutor in the state's ethics case against Stefani.

The hearing already was aimed at deciding whether Stefani should be punished for violating a judge's orders that the text messages be handed over to the judge first, and whether Stefani was obligated to tell the judge the messages indicated Kilpatrick and his then-chief of staff, Christine Beatty, lied under oath. Ethics violation punishments for lawyers can range from reprimand to disbarment.

Legal experts, including one of the city's lawyers, say it is unlikely Stefani can be penalized for distributing copies of the messages despite the secrecy agreement he later signed.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's spokeswoman, Maria Miller, said it's too early to discuss whether she might pursue criminal perjury charges against Stefani.

"He certainly could be charged criminally, too," said Curt Benson, a professor at the Cooley Law School. "The irony is, this arises from a perjury case against the mayor. All it takes is: (A) Was he under oath?; and (B) Did he willfully make false statements?"

Stefani in the past has repeatedly evaded questions on whether he released text messages that revealed Kilpatrick lied under oath during a 2007 trial and led to his resignation.

But Stefani told The Detroit News outright in September 2008 that he didn't release the messages to the Free Press, saying "absolutely not."

Testifying in August in a similar discipline hearing for Kilpatrick lawyer Samuel McCargo, Stefani said he made only four printed copies of the text messages and one computer disk version. He said the copies were for himself, his wife, his secretary and his client, former Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown.

In a 2008 deposition in a Freedom of Information suit filed by the papers seeking access to more text messages, Stefani refused to answer questions about how the text messages were released but said "whoever did furnish this information to the Free Press did the city a service."

Stefani admitted Thursday he gave copies of the messages to Free Press reporter Jim Schaefer a few days after receiving them on Oct. 5, 2007, from the city's text message pager provider, Skytel. A jury had already awarded his clients $6.5 million in September. The texts contradicted Kilpatrick's earlier denials on the stand of an extramarital affair.

Stefani used the messages to parlay a settlement with the city after Kilpatrick vowed to appeal. Unaware of the messages, the Detroit City Council voted Oct. 23 to settle the case for $8.4 million.

Based on the testimony, it appears that Stefani gave the messages to the newspaper before signing an agreement with the city to keep them secret.

Three months later, the Free Press published a sampling of text messages, without citing a source. The publication sparked an investigation by Worthy that led her to seek more text messages that were used to charge Kilpatrick and Beatty with felonies that led to them being jailed.

Paul Anger, editor of the Free Press, declined comment. But Pat Shellenbarger, a former Detroit News reporter and adjunct professor of journalism at Grand Valley State University, said the Free Press may have taken months to verify that the messages were genuine before publishing excerpts.

"Sometimes lawyers call more of the shots at newspapers these days than the editors," he said. "But still, you have to wonder why it took so long to publish. I can see them being very cautious, but that's a lot of time during which the city lost a lot of money."

William Goodman, an attorney hired by the council during the scandal, said he doesn't believe the city could recoup some of the settlement because it appears Stefani released texts before signing the settlement. "He covered himself fairly well," Goodman said.

City Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr. said he would have preferred that Stefani had notified council members, but doing so might not have prevented the yearlong scandal that drove Kilpatrick from office.

"On a certain level, it's not really that earth-shattering," Cockrel said of Stefani's admission. "I always considered that a possibility."

Edward Cardenas, a spokesman for Mayor Dave Bing, issued a statement saying the city will "review the testimony and the outcome of these proceedings to determine a course of action."

Sharon McPhail, a former city lawyer who defended Kilpatrick against the council's attempt to oust him, said she knew Stefani "was the source all along." She said he contradicted himself repeatedly during testimony at hearings involving the scandal.

"If perjury is a problem, he should be charged," McPhail said. "Everyone has to follow the rules. I would think we would want to hold everybody to the same standard."

Stefani testified Thursday that he made several copies of the text messages for "safe keeping." He called the lawsuits he brought in 2003 on behalf of Brown and police officers Harold Nelthrope and Walter Harris "politically challenging" because of the millions in taxpayer money spent to avoid having the truth come out. He said he feared the text messages "might never see the light of day."

"All of which sounds very noble, until he lies under oath," said Benson, the Cooley law professor.

"It wasn't something just for the Free Press; it was just that it needed to come out," Stefani told The News on Thursday. "I hope to be able to testify more about what happened."

The discipline board is considering professional misconduct charges against Stefani and city-paid lawyers for Kilpatrick. And if the case goes to trial, a conviction on committing perjury in court charges could lead to a sentence of up to 15 years.

dguthrie@detnews.com (313) 222-2548 Darren A. Nichols and Leonard N. Fleming contributed.