Report: relative calls Kwame Kilpatrick prosecution racist, Detroit brainwashed

Gus Burns | By Gus Burns |
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on February 21, 2013 at 11:57 AM, updated February 21, 2013 at 3:12 PM

DETROIT — Kwame Kilaptrick has been careful not to allege racism when speaking of the federal corruption case against him; but his brother-in-law is taking a different route.

In an interview with CBS Detroit (full stroy), Daniel Ferguson — Kilpatrick's brother-in-law and Bobby Ferguson's cousin — said the intense media coverage that surrounded the ex-mayor's text-message scandal, which led to perjury charges and the revelation that he had an affair with Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, has tainted Detroiters' perception of the man.

Here are some of Ferguson quotes pulled from the CBS Detoit story:

"You talk about race, come on man, that's what it is. If Kwame Kilpatrick was white and his name was Kent Masters Kensington, he would not be on trial."

"This case was the media's case before it became the feds' case. My whole thing about this is fairness and the man did not get a fair shake, I believe. And there's a large segment of the city that believes the same thing. Just think about all the negative publicity in this case before the trial came up. The propaganda campaign that's been running in this city for the last 10 years has been heavily influenced to get a conviction against Kwame Kilpatrick, Bobby Ferguson and Bernard Kilpatrick."

"There's a large segment of black folks that are brainwashed, and I'm not saying this jury, I'm saying the citizens and the people of Detroit were systematically programmed to hate Kwame Malik Kilpatrick. To the people who heard the evidence in there, they're kind of like 'Oh, ok, dang we didn't look at it like that' because they had been programmed for so many years to not look at it like that."

"It's almost a travesty that they're even on trial. If you take a consensus of the people in the city... people would reelect [Kilpatrick] today. He would win right now, and there in my logic lies the travesty. I mean, here it is, they're trying to get people to hate the guy that they elected, and here it is 10 years later and the people still would vote him in office and they still champion him on his work. Now, the affair and all that other stuff, yeah, ok. But his body of work, you cannot question it."

"What happened here in Detroit was a bloodless coup. If you look at every situation overseas that the government goes in and takes out the leader and puts in their own public regime, it's the same thing that happened here in Detroit. They came in and destroyed the education, destroyed the real estate, took out the head person in charge and created chaos. And now they're restoring order the way they see fit by bringing in the emergency manager."

So does Bobby Ferguson's cousin, Kilpatrick's brother-in-law, have a point?

Would prosecutors be going after "Kent Masters Kensington" as aggressively?

Has this trial been tainted from the media frenzy nearly five years ago?

How much of a role does race play in this case, from the prosecution to the jury's perception of the defendants' guilt?

Let your opinion be heard in the comment section below.