Press and partisans camp out in court, waiting for a verdict in Dixon case 

Posted: 7:00 pm Sun, November 22, 2009
By Brendan Kearney
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer

After issuing a flurry of notes on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, the jury considering the gift card theft allegations against Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon went silent to the outside world for five hours before asking to be sent home for the weekend.

And while those dozen city denizens deliberated, the rest of us waited.

BlackBerries and reading material, including a Bible, emerged from the bags of those gathered. Light banter seemed as popular as verdict predictions. Some fidgeted in their seats or by walking around or in and out of the courtroom.

Dixon rotated between her chair at the trial table, mingling with her supporters on the left side of the second-floor downtown courtroom, and standing out in the hallway, where she made phone calls.

While the mayor has appeared anxious at moments throughout the trial, she appeared in good spirits as she sat with her lawyers and paralegals, though she smiled and laughed more than she spoke. Chewing gum, Dixon also busied herself with city business, and at one point, was overheard discussing a city “land bank” with one of her attorneys.

That a jury in the next room might torpedo her political career and her pension was hardly obvious on to the casual observer; it was almost as if Dixon and her legal team were waiting to catch a flight.

When Dixon wasn’t with them, her lawyers, led by Arnold Weiner and Dale Kelberman, sat in a loose circle to the left of their table, talking about topics as varied as their kids, British comedians, even possible inventions.

Kelberman held forth on his solution for, when one’s car windows are open, having to adjust the radio volume as one speeds and slows. He proposed syncing the speedometer to the volume knob or somehow getting the radio to just barely outdo any ambient noise in the car. His colleagues seemed intrigued, but none of them could be heard to offer themselves as investors or patent counsel.

As the afternoon wore on, Weiner and Kelberman guessed at a list of the all-time greatest Baltimore professional football players, as Jeffrey Nusinov checked their names against those on his laptop screen. Later, Barry Gogel sat at the defense table playing a game of computer solitaire that was interrupted only when he came into possession of a crossword puzzle, once soliciting assistance from Kelberman.

Half an hour before the jury was sent home for the day, Nusinov wandered over to the defense table, where Investigator John Poliks had been sitting, apparently unoccupied, for long stretches of the afternoon. (The only other member of the prosecution team who mostly remained in the courtroom, Assistant State Prosecutor Tamara Gustave, read a book.)

“What’s going on?” Poliks greeted Nusinov.

The answer was obvious to everyone else scattered around the room, as they chatted idly or caught up on news outside Courtroom 234: Nothing … yet.

Jury deliberations resume this morning at 9 a.m.