Decades of Detroit Controversy Explored with Sharon McPhail

FAQs

• Why does Sharon McPhail think Kwame Kilpatrick's sentence was too harsh?

  McPhail said the sentence was way out of line. She contrasted it with a police officer who walked into someone’s apartment, killed him and got ten years, and said that even if Kilpatrick did what he was accused of, giving contracts to some people, that happens every day without charges. She said the law is worthless if it isn’t equally applied, and called 28 years ridiculous.

• Does Sharon McPhail believe there really was a party at the Manoogian Mansion?

  McPhail said there was not a party; Kilpatrick’s father was over there for a get-together. She said the issue was whether something happened to a woman that Kilpatrick took part in, and there wasn’t. She said there was a plan in place to get him that took off after an executive order requiring 51% of workers on projects getting city tax breaks to be Detroit residents, when a group of businessmen decided to get him out of office.

• Why did Kwame Kilpatrick accept a plea, according to Sharon McPhail?

  McPhail said she was not in the loop. She was trying the case in front of Jennifer Granholm and getting ready to put Kwame Kenyatta and Ken Cockrell Jr. on the stand the next day when she was called and told a plea had been entered. She said she was told that they threatened to prosecute his wife, and that he therefore agreed to whatever plea they were offering.

• What does Sharon McPhail say went wrong with the Gary Brown case?

  McPhail said she had been put in charge of the text-message cases, but a lawyer in the office and a couple of outside lawyers met with Kilpatrick at the Manoogian Mansion and convinced him to pull her off. When the Gary Brown case came up for settlement, she said, a lawyer told the city’s lawyer to call the mayor directly instead of her. It should have settled, she said; instead a jury awarded $8 million, and that is where the perjury was.

• How much did Detroit Community Schools improve under Sharon McPhail's leadership?

  McPhail said that when she took over, the school scored 4.56 percent on a Mackinac Center for Public Policy measure of testing, graduation rate and more, and that by October 2018 it was at 86.12 percent, roughly an 82-point improvement and the number one charter school in the state for student achievement improvement. That October, she said, the authorizer, Bay Mills, took over the school because she wasn’t certified, which she called a red herring.