Kwame Kilpatrick to be deposed in slain stripper lawsuit

DETROIT (WXYZ) - While lawyers grilled his ex-Chief of Staff Wednesday – Kwame Kilpatrick was getting ready to answer questions in the same controversial case.

The former mayor will be deposed Thursday morning in the slain-stripper lawsuit.

Investigator Heather Catallo has learned that Kwame Kilpatrick will be transported from the federal prison in Milan to the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit tomorrow. That’s where he will be put under oath for a deposition.

The question now is… will he actually answer the questions?

Kwame Kilpatrick will get to change out his prison jumpsuit and into one of his fancy suits.

Greene was an exotic dancer who was shot to death in 2003. It’s been rumored that Greene danced for Kilpatrick during a never-proven wild party at the Manoogian Mansion.

Her family is suing the City of Detroit and the former mayor – claiming they obstructed the investigation into her murder.

Attorney Norman Yatooma has been waiting years for the chance to depose Kilpatrick –
but he does not expect to get a lot of details, considering the former mayor is now charged with federal tax and fraud crimes.

And as the Action News Investigators first reported earlier this week, Kilpatrick’s wife and father are now planning to plead the Fifth so they don’t incriminate themselves in their upcoming depositions.

“If I take my cues from what the wife and dad are planning to do, I can probably expect a lot of Fifth Amendment privileges. There again, I’ll take them, question by question, answer by answer, I’ll take that five word response every time,” said Yatooma.

Because it’s a civil lawsuit, Yatooma does not have to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt – and invoking Fifth Amendment rights can be very telling to a jury.

Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown knows all too well what Kwame Kilpatrick can be like in a deposition.

“He chewed an apple most of the way through my deposition,” said Brown.

You’ll recall, Brown’s whistleblower lawsuit is the case that ultimately brought down the former mayor and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty. Brown says Kilpatrick just stalled when he was under oath in Brown’s case – and he expects very little new information to come from tomorrow’s testimony.

“I think there’s going to be no new evidence that comes out of any of the depositions that haven’t already been reported by the media, or aren’t in my transcripts from the trial, or depositions that were taken in my trail. I don’t see any new information coming out at all,” Brown said.

Kwame Kilpatrick’s deposition will be videotaped, and it will be sealed – so we won’t know what he says tomorrow until a Judge unseals the testimony. Because of the seal, it will be hard to know whether he invokes his Fifth Amendment rights when he faces some pretty tough questions about whether or not there was a Manoogian Mansion party and whether or not Tamara Greene was assaulted that fateful night. Kilpatrick’s attorney, Jim Thomas, has been quoted as saying he won’t decide whether to recommend that his client plead the Fifth until he gets inside the deposition.