John Shea's Big Case

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Shea lives in Dexter Township with his wife, Marilyn, who works for the U-M, two Labrador retrievers, and three cats. On trial days, he gets up at five forty-five and leaves the house by seven. If the weather's good, he'll drive his 2004 Lincoln LS; if it's bad, he takes the 2005 Toyota Tundra pickup.

When he gets to Detroit, his first stop is to pick up his client. "We go to court together," says Shea.

That's certainly not a standard part of a defense lawyer's duties, but Shea says that Bernard Kilpatrick hasn't had a working vehicle since last summer, when his car "suffered a fire ... his wheels got burned up, and he hasn't had the wherewithal to replace 'em."

Kilpatrick, who's seventy-one, no longer owns the waterfront condo where the meetings were alleged to have taken place--it's been foreclosed. Yet during the trial, prosecutors have presented evidence that he deposited more than $1.4 million into his personal and business accounts in 2004, 2005, and 2007. (They skipped 2006 because the IRS doesn't dispute his tax payments for that year.)