Detroit Federal prosecutors Monday fought the release of imprisoned contractor Bobby Ferguson, calling him a tyrant and saying he should spend the next 10 years behind bars for teaming with former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to extort businessmen and corrupt city government.
Prosecutors filed a 33-page response to a request for compassionate release by Ferguson, who last month argued President Donald Trump created a sentencing disparity in January by commuting Kilpatrick s 28-year prison sentence for racketeering conspiracy. Ferguson s 21-year sentence was not commuted, and he remains incarcerated in a low-security federal prison in eastern Ohio.
Ferguson s request threatens to shorten one of the longest sentences for public corruption in U.S. history and alter punishment for participating in a racketeering conspiracy that helped push Detroit to the brink of bankruptcy. He was convicted of nine charges, including racketeering conspiracy, bribery and extortion in March 201
Kilpatrick was originally sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for a racketeering scandal that destroyed his political career and took him out of office. Ferguson got 22 years for his part in it, while others got lesser sentences. He had appealed before but did not win.
They were convicted of running a criminal enterprise from the mayor’s office in Detroit through corrupted contracts, steering city contracts toward Ferguson, and intimidating other contractors. His defense at the time argued that Ferguson’s business was honest and Kilpatrick had nothing to do with the awarding of contracts.
Kilpatrick served seven years before his sentence was commuted. That came after a lengthy campaign to get him freed from many in Detroit who felt his sentence was too harsh.
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Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who has served more than seven years of a 28-year prison sentence for corruption crimes, was released from federal prison Wednesday after President Donald Trump commuted his sentence, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman told The Associated Press.
DETROIT — President Donald Trump has commuted the prison sentence of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who has served about seven years of a 28-year sentence for corruption.The announcement Wednesday was part of a flurry of clemency action in the final hours of Trump s White House term that benefited more than 140 people, including rap performers, ex-members of Congress and other allies of Trump and his family.A White House statement said that prominent members of the Detroit