In Dixon trial, focus turns to jury instructions 

Posted: 1:25 pm Wed, November 18, 2009
By Brendan Kearney
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer

Lawyers for the state and Mayor Sheila Dixon will return to Baltimore City Circuit Court this afternoon to argue over jury instructions in the theft case against Mayor Sheila Dixon.

The jury was sent home this morning after the defense rested its case without calling Dixon.

The mayor declined to comment at the end of the evidence, acknowledging it has been difficult to remain silent in trial and about the trial.

“I think everything’s going just fine,” said Arnold M. Weiner, one of her attorneys, on his way out of the courthouse.

Neither side would say much about the decision to keep Dixon off the witness stand. Asked whether it would have helped the prosecution’s case to be able to cross-examine the mayor, State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh said, “It depends on what she was going to say.”

The case had been expected to go through Thanksgiving, with a potential witness list of 72 people, but shorter-than-expected presentations from both sides means the jury will begin deliberations by tomorrow afternoon.

Dixon remains charged with five counts of misusing gift cards meant for needy families.

Visiting Judge Dennis M. Sweeney threw out two of the seven original counts on Tuesday, after the prosecution rested without calling Dixon’s former boyfriend, Ronald H. Lipscomb.

Dixon’s lawyers, who called two witnesses on Tuesday afternoon, rested this morning after calling two more.

Today’s first witness was Michael Koletar, who owns The Flower Cart on Harford Road. He testified that Lipscomb paid $285 to send Dixon a “large, big, beautiful flower arrangement” at City Hall in January 2004, signed only from “anonymous.” The mayor’s defense is that she thought the cards she received in an unmarked white envelope in December 2005 from developer Patrick Turner were yet more personal gifts from Lipscomb.

The second witness was Rev. Frank M. Reid III, Dixon’s pastor at Bethel A.M.E. Church, home to one of the largest congregations in Baltimore.

Reid, dressed in dark pinstripes and wearing dark-rimmed glasses, leaned forward at the witness stand and gripped the lectern as defense attorney Weiner, standing across the room next to the jury box, asked him about his decades-long friendship with the mayor.

Reid’s testimony was authoritative but brief.

He met Dixon in 1978 in Boston, where he was studying at the Harvard Divinity School, through a friend of a friend, he said. She visited him in Los Angeles on the way to or from her honeymoon, she attended his sister’s wedding, and he baptized her children. And he nominated her to the church board of trustees.

“In my dealings with her, she’s always been honest and forthright,” he said in closing. Prosecutors did not cross-examine Reid, and he left the courtroom with his assistant. (According to a press release issued at 12:43 p.m., Dixon hosted an installment of the “Just For Men” speaker series today at noon; one of the speakers was Rev. Reid.)

After the jury was dismissed, defense attorney Dale P. Kelberman sought to whittle the case down further, arguing Dixon cannot be convicted of stealing Toys “R” Us gift cards from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City’s Holly Trolley charity event because she came into possession of them lawfully and only used one of them. She gave one gift card as to a member of her staff as a present; the other six were found in her house during the prosecutor’s June 2008 raid.

“We’re skating on the edge of guesswork, if we’re not already there,” Kelberman said.

Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Shelly Glenn said the jury could draw a fair inference that Dixon did not intend to return the cards to the housing authority. Sweeney agreed.

“I believe the counts as they’re currently structured can go to the jury,” he said.

The afternoon session Wednesday will concern jury instructions.

Kelberman wants the judge to tell the jurors they cannot convict Dixon of two of the three Holly Trolley-related counts if they find she misused only one card because the indictment refers to “certain gift cards.”

If the mayor is convicted on any of the counts, she will lose her office.