We can’t let Tamara Greene case be forgotten

From Judge Tim Kenny’s lips to God’s ears.

In an eloquent but stern oratory from the bench as he sentenced Christine Beatty to jail Tuesday, he called for an end to the text message scandal.

“It’s now my hope that with this sentencing, that with regards to the text messaging case … this chapter in the city’s history will be closed,” he said. “I’m not saying that any other investigations should be abandoned … but with all of the problems and crises befalling the city, whether it’s budget problems or Detroit Public Schools problems, it does seem to me that the healthy thing is to put” this chapter behind us.

While I share the judge’s hope, we should be clear on which chapter we’ve read.
Now that the former mayor and his former chief of staff have gone to jail, the text message scandal is over.

But we have come full circle to the suspected events that began this saga, the reason the mayor fired two cops: They were doing their jobs.

Now someone else must find out whether something happened to the late Tamara Greene at the mayoral mansion — and who later killed her. This case should never get cold.

This is the point

Kenny, a fair and disciplined jurist, played the sentencing right down the middle — chastising Beatty for misusing her intelligence and talents, but not letting the prosecution’s airing of Beatty’s financial woes — $5,522.67 in car payments and mortgage and other monthly bills and $726,000 in attorney’s fees — force him to set a restitution hearing. He reminded them that paying restitution requires having a job.

And he, hopefully for the last time necessary, explained that the perjury and obstruction of justice cases were not about sex.

“Those who think that this is just a case about two consenting adults in a relationship have missed the point.”

The point.

We’ve been all around it. But it sometimes got lost in a sea of sex, lies and text messages: What happened to Tamara Greene?

Time for new truths

In an interview after sentencing, Kenny said that the text scandal “sucked the oxygen out of the room.”

“There does come a time when your focus has to shift from that issue to the present and the future,” he said. “It’s not healthy to us as individuals, or to us as a country, to keep picking at that same wound when there are other issues as I mentioned, public school problems, city budget problems, that really command our attention. … I’m not saying the scars won’t remain or that the financial consequence won’t be there for a long time, but I do think that we sort of get stuck.”

But make no mistake. Kenny wants truth, but new truths.

“Whatever legitimate investigation should go forward,” he said, “but it should go forward full throttle without being a constant return to the Brown and Nelthorpe cases.”

Got it.

Text messages: Done.

Tamara Greene investigation:

Still open.