DEFINE 'WHORE AROUND'

From today's Free Press, a story on why it will be so hard to make additional charges stick on Kwame. This is pretty funny stuff. Remember Bill Clinton saying, "It depends what your definition of 'is', is." This will depend what one's definition of 'whore' is. Nice, lol.





TEXT MESSAGE SCANDAL
New claim that mayor lied hangs on 1 word
His answer on affairs can be debated
BY M.L. ELRICK and JOE SWICKARD • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS • July 9, 2008

The prosecution's hopes of expanding perjury charges against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to say he lied about affairs with several women hang on a fleeting exchange during a police whistle-blower trial last summer, the Free Press has learned.
On Aug. 29, Mike Stefani, the attorney for two cops suing Kilpatrick and the city for retaliating against them, asked the mayor a series of questions under oath.
"You said you don't whore around on your wife?" Stefani asked.
"Yes," Kilpatrick replied.
That exchange appears to be the only time during Kilpatrick's several hours on the witness stand that he issued anything close to a blanket denial of infidelity.
Legal experts said Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy may have a difficult time proving perjury based on that answer alone.
"Ooh, boy," said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and perjury expert who now teaches law at Wayne State University. "The question is ambiguous."
Attorney Len Niehoff, who teaches evidence at the University of Michigan Law School, said the exchange could lead to a courtroom debate over one colorful term in particular.
"The definition of 'whore around' is likely to be a contentious point," Niehoff said.
"Perjury cases are litigation over language. So the more precise the language is, the easier the prosecution," he said. "The less precise the language is, the harder the prosecution is."
Kilpatrick already faces several felony charges, including perjury, growing out of his court testimony last summer. Most notably, he is charged with lying to jurors when he denied repeatedly under oath that he was sexually involved with his then-chief of staff, Christine Beatty. The affair became known when the Free Press published excerpts of text messages between the mayor and Beatty establishing the affair.
In March, Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty with multiple felonies, including lying about their affair. The pair deny the charges, and their lawyers have raised questions about the authenticity of the text messages.
Prosecutors said Thursday that they are preparing to expand that perjury charge to say Kilpatrick also lied at the trial about affairs with other women. Prosecutors have not detailed how they know about other affairs, but Worthy has obtained more than five years of text messages from the paging devices of 20 or more people, court records show.
On Tuesday, Kilpatrick and Beatty's lawyers reacted with incredulity to the court testimony Worthy's office is relying upon.
"That's it?" asked Meyer Morganroth, who is defending Beatty. "I read the transcript, and I was puzzled about what they were talking about.
"This? It's nothing."
James Thomas, one of several lawyers defending Kilpatrick against eight felony counts, said: "That exchange -- and all the meanings it could have -- is like a law school exam.
"I'll just say it's certainly not the type of case I'd like to try."
Morganroth said the back-and-forth between Stefani and Kilpatrick is so poorly phrased "that it could mean he does whore around."
"If you read the question, it asks if this is what he says. Well, maybe he does say that he doesn't whore around," Morganroth said. "Maybe he's answering truthfully because that's what he goes around saying."
Kilpatrick had publicly denied cheating on his wife. At trial, he also denied having an affair with Beatty. And he testified that he did not have an illicit liaison with an unidentified Jamaican woman at a west-side barber shop.
In any case, Morganroth said, "whoring around" is an imprecise term: "Go into court with this and people will say, 'Are you kidding?' A judge will look at this and laugh at them."
Morganroth said raising the possibility of additional philandering might be an attempt to split the defense team.
"Maybe they hope Christine will get mad at him," he said. "It's not going to happen."
Henning said prosecutors may be taking a risk.
Pushing a weak issue "could generate sympathy if it looks like all you're trying to do is paint the mayor as a bad guy," he said. "It could backfire."
Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty with perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office after text messages showed the pair lied on the witness stand about their relationship and whether they tried to fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown. Brown said he was poised to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by members of the mayor's inner circle that might have exposed Kilpatrick's affair with Beatty.
Contact M.L. ELRICK at 313-222-6582 or mlelrick@freepress.com.