Text messaging

Starting in September, Michigan jurors will no longer be allowed to send text messages, "tweet" or engage in other forms of electronic communication during trials.

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, fresh off his stint in jail, is suing telecommunications company SkyTel for releasing his text messages, the AM Law Daily reports. The company reportedly claims it did so appropriately under court order.

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his onetime chief of staff, Christine Beatty, have lost their bid to keep private un-redacted copies of hundreds of text messages they exchanged on city-owned equipment, the Detroit Free Press reports:

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick went to jail this week, as part of a plea deal on two counts of obstruction of justice for lying under oath, while a city attorney was cleared for her part in the handling of an open records requested related to the mayoral scandal.

Key testimony about an electronic records policy has bolstered the case of two Detroit newspapers in their ongoing open-records lawsuit against the city, according to their attorneys.

The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are suing the city in an effort to get records related to the administration of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the affair he had with his onetime chief of staff, Christine Beatty.  The depositions have been going on for the last several days.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick this morning used his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 82 times to avoid answering deposition questions from a Detroit Free Press attorney.

Last month saw Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick trying to force Free Press and Detroit News reporters to testify in the newspapers' Freedom of Information lawsuit against him. 

A Wayne County judge ruled Thursday that the embattled Detroit mayor and his ex-chief of staff can't force reporters to reveal how they obtained the former couple's flirtatious text messages. 

Two Detroit newspapers are fighting indicted Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's attempts to depose their reporters amid his ongoing legal woes.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick this week lost one round of the ongoing legal battle in his steamy text-message scandal, when a county judge agreed to unseal the transcript of a closed mid-May hearing in his criminal case.