District Court Judge Ronald Giles ordered Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to jail on Thursday for violating the terms of his bond, a decision the judge said he would have made for any "John Six-Pack" defendant before him.
The mayor, who is accused of lying under oath in a civil case and faces eight felony counts, made a trip to Canada on city business last month without informing the court in advance, leading the county prosecutor's office to request Kilpatrick be punished and triggering the judge's ruling.
Only minutes earlier, the mayor offered an apology to the court, telling Giles that for seven months, "I've been living in an incredible state of pressure and scrutiny."
But Giles sent the mayor to jail anyway, telling him he would have given any defendant the same treatment.
"What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in that seat, what would I do? And that answer is simple," he said.
Circuit Court Judge Thomas E. Jackson said he wouldn't hear an appeal by Kilpatrick's lawyers until 9 a.m. Friday, meaning the mayor was to spend the night in jail.
Defense lawyer James Thomas pleaded with the judge to take up the matter Thursday, but the judge refused, saying: "I just gave you my answer."
Earlier Thursday, Kilpatrick waived his right to a preliminary examination and will head to trial on perjury and other criminal charges that could land him in prison for up to 15 years.
Lawyers for the mayor and ex-Chief of Staff Christine Beatty asked Giles to waive next month's prelim. The criminal case now heads to Wayne County Circuit Court for trial.
Kilpatrick and Beatty are charged with perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. They are accused of lying about having an intimate relationship and their roles in the firing of a police official.
Both deny the charges.
Kilpatrick and Beatty denied under oath during a civil trial last year that they had a romantic relationship in 2002 and 2003.
But excerpts of sexually explicit text messages recovered from Beatty's city-issued pager and first published in January by the Free Press contradicted their testimony.
Giles asked the defendants during Thursday morning's hearing if they freely agreed to waive their rights to a preliminary exam and both said they did.
The judge then set a circuit court arraignment date of Aug. 14.
The preliminary exam -- a hearing where a judge determines whether there's probable cause to hold a trial -- had been set for Sept. 22.
After the issue of the preliminary examination was concluded, Assistant Wayne County's Prosecutor Robert Moran then asked Giles to punish Kilpatrick over the trip to Canada.
The mayor went across the border last month to push the sale of the city's half of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
Kilpatrick was required to alert the court of all travel plans.
Moran asked Giles to modify Kilpatrick's bond because of what he called a "flagrant" violation.
"It's not serious to him that he's a criminal defendant," Moran told Giles.
"This court should be outraged," he said.
After a short recess, Kilpatrick stood and apologized to Giles, saying it wouldn't happen again.
The judge then ordered a recess and came back with his decision. Kilpatrick stared directly at the judge with his hands clasped near his face as Giles announced his decision.
"I think it's the most extreme measure he can take. I don't agree with him," Thomas said.
Also Thursday, Giles decided documents that include about 200 pages of text messages that he had ordered sealed until he could review whether they should be released to the public will be transferred with the case file to circuit court.
Because Kilpatrick and Beatty waived their preliminary hearing, Giles didn't rule on whether those documents would be included in the criminal case file that is open to the public and the media.
Lawyers for Kilpatrick and Beatty had argued that the judge should return those documents to them, and prosecutors had argued that they should be allowed to remove some information from them if they were made public.
Lawyers for the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News argued the documents should be made public or preserved.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty less than two months after the Free Press published excerpts of the text messages. Fingerprinted with their booking photos broadcast across the country, the pair were accused of lying under oath about their relationship and about their roles in the firing of a police official.
More text messages released in April revealed the evolution of flirty and sexually explicit exchanges to professions of love and promises of marriage.
Kilpatrick and his high-priced team of attorneys have questioned the authenticity of those and other text messages, while fighting battles on several legal and political fronts.
A split city council voted in February to ask Kilpatrick to step down. The nine-member group later asked Gov. Jennifer Granholm to remove the mayor for misconduct and plans to hold forfeiture of office proceedings against him.
The council accused Kilpatrick of violating the city charter by not revealing a confidentiality agreement linked to an $8.4 million settlement in the civil lawsuit.
Through it all Kilpatrick has remained defiant.
On July 24, investigators with the prosecutor's office, seeking to serve a subpoena on a Kilpatrick friend, stopped at the Detroit home of the mayor's sister.
The officers testified that Kilpatrick burst onto the porch, shouting obscenities and shoving one of the investigators.
The next day, Giles ordered the mayor to submit to drug testing and post a $7,500 bond.
Michigan State Police are investigating the assault allegations.