Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s appeal of a public corruption conviction, possibly ending his bid to overturn a decision that sent him to prison for 28 years.

The court announced its decision not to review the case on its order list Monday without comment. The majority of cases petitioned to the court are rejected without comment.

The court’s other choices with Kilpatrick’s case — as with any other petition it receives — were to accept the petition and schedule a hearing or issue a summary judgment and send it back to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to be reconsidered.

Harold Gurewitz, Kilpatrick’s Detroit attorney who filed the appeal, said he thought the former mayor’s arguments were good ones.

“I’m disappointed in the result, and understand, of course, that the Supreme Court accepts a very small number of cases for review out of the very large number of them that are presented for consideration,” Gurewitz said. “Disappointed that the court didn’t give us an opportunity to argue the issues of law that we raised.”

Gurewitz had petitioned the Supreme Court to take the appeal after the 6th Circuit last year denied a request to rehear the case. A three-judge panel last August upheld Kilpatrick’s conviction on 24 counts that include bribery, extortion and fraud for steering work to a longtime friend, Bobby Ferguson, who also was convicted.

Gurewitz had argued that two federal agents were given too much latitude by the trial court in presenting the prosecution’s case against Kilpatrick. He also had argued that Kilpatrick was wrongly forced to retain lawyers whom he no longer wanted and who worked for a firm suing him on another matter.

The Supreme Court rejected Ferguson’s request to hear his case late last year.

Gurewitz said Monday he had not spoken with Kilpatrick about the ruling and was unable to comment on how Kilpatrick took the news.

He added that the former mayor still has a legal option to ask the court to reconsider its position, and he also could challenge his conviction on constitutional grounds. But Gurewitz said he did not know at this point whether Kilpatrick would pursue either avenue.

Kilpatrick, 46, is in a federal penitentiary in El Reno, Okla. He is scheduled for release in August 2037.

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947, tspangler@freepress.com or on Twitter at @tsspangler. Staff writer Jim Schaefer contributed to this report.