Dixon trial takes ‘unusual’ turn 

Posted: 4:52 pm Wed, November 25, 2009
By Brendan Kearney and Danny Jacobs
Daily Record Legal Affairs Writers

The judge in Mayor Sheila Dixon’s trial took the jury down what he described as a potentially “slippery slope” by granting the jury’s request to review video testimony of three key witnesses.
 
“There’s no perfect solution, but we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” said Judge Dennis M. Sweeney.
 
Sweeney then cleared the courtroom of media and onlookers so jurors, Dixon and lawyers could watch the videotaped testimonies of developer Patrick Turner, housing department employee and Dixon’s current boyfriend Edward Anthony, and city lobbyist Mary Pat Fannon.
 
Told of the developments on the jury’s fifth day of deliberations — the testimony in the trial lasted as long — some local attorneys expressed wonderment at Sweeney’s response to the jury.
 
“I’ve never heard that being done,” said state Del. Curt Anderson, D-Baltimore, on his way into the Baltimore City Circuit Court to file documents in one of his own client’s criminal cases. “I’ve never seen a judge allow them to view a video transcript of the testimony.”
 
“It doesn’t happen in a run-of-the-mill case,” added Andrew Radding, a member of Adelberg, Rudow, Dorf & Hendler LLC in Baltimore, when reached at his office.
 
But University of Maryland Law Professor Doug Colbert, who has attended much of the trial, said there is a distinction to be drawn between the jury’s earlier request for transcripts in general and this latest request for transcripts of specific witnesses.
 
“It’s not strange,” said Colbert of Sweeney’s decision to allow a replay. “It’s actually quite typical.”
 
The mayor is charged with five counts related to her use of gift cards meant for needy Baltimore families during the holidays. Two counts concern the $1,000 worth of Target and Best Buy gift cards sponsored by Turner in 2005 and 2006; two more concern leftover gift cards from the Holly Trolley, a housing department charity program, one of which Dixon gave to Fannon and five more of which were found in Dixon’s home.
 
The closed viewing of the videotaped testimony lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, but Judge Sweeney spent about another half-hour determining how best to redact certain portions of the tape.

Dale P. Kelberman, one of Dixon’s lawyers, noted Sweeney earlier denied the jury’s request to view witness transcripts and warned that the decision could become a logistical “nightmare.”

“Once we go down that road, we’re going to hear that another juror wants to hear another part of a witness’s testimony,” he said.

Prosecutors did not object to the jury reviewing the videotaped testimonies.
 
Kelberman’s arguments were in support of a motion for a mistrial, his second such request since the prosecution rested its case last week. Kelberman on Wednesday called the jury’s job of parsing the five charges against Dixon, some of which are mutually exclusive of one another, an “impossible task,” saying that the jury was asked to play the rule of a “Talmudic scholar.”

Kelberman also said that the impending Thanksgiving holiday placed an “inordinate pressure to return a verdict just to return a verdict,” creating a “coercive environment.”
 
Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh responded that the jury is doing “exactly what they were supposed to do” as part of the “give-and-take in the normal course of jury deliberation.”
 
Sweeney said “it would not be appropriate, without indication from the jury, to discontinue the admittedly lengthy deliberation process.”
 
The jury’s request indicates their main hurdle now is factual, said Byron L. Warnken, an associate professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Previous juror notes had focused on legal questions, such as the definition of “misappropriation.”

“When the fight is over a fact, that may be a sign they are getting close to reaching verdict,” he said.
 
Dixon again was in and out of the courtroom Wednesday, back and forth from City Hall. Notable among audience members were Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the first female bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and her husband, former Baltimore Bullet Stan McKenzie.