Dixon trial going smoothly under Sweeney

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The beginning of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon’s gift card misappropriation trial was in many ways like the opening night of a long-awaited play, a production in preparation for years finally coming to the stage.

State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh finally telling the jury about the dirt he’s found after all these years of investigating; Dixon lawyer Arnold M. Weiner dramatically attempting to poke holes in the case; the audience feeling the tension.

Directing the show is Judge Dennis M. Sweeney. And with all that’s at stake for everyone involved, especially the mayor, and with all the competing interests, Sweeney has kept things running smoothly, even bringing  welcome levity to a case about whether the mayor used gift cards intended to brighten some poor child’s Christmas to instead brighten her own.

He has accommodated minor delays occasioned by a fainting juror and an ill prosecutor, but he also has refused to let a pretrial motions hearing delay the case further. He has both sustained and overruled lawyers’ objections, but has neither slowed down witness examinations nor commandeered them when they weren’t the crispest.

“The good trial judges don’t get in the way of the testimony, and they don’t usurp the role of the trial lawyer,” said Thomas C. Valkenet, a Baltimore attorney who was in the courtroom Friday morning. “Judge Sweeney is not interjecting himself.

“He looks like he’s running a very elegant courtroom,” Valkenet said.

Sweeney, a retired Howard County judge sitting by special assignment, has paid particular attention to the jurors in an effort to make them feel comfortable, involved, and appreciated.

On Thursday, the day of opening statements, when the warmth of the courtroom was distracting, Sweeney moved the proceedings to a cooler courtroom for the afternoon. Between the two hours of opening statements and the first witness, Sweeney treated the jurors to snacks and sodas.

Even in telling them they must not doze during the trial, or face the embarrassment of a sheriff’s deputy tapping them on the arm, Sweeney injected a bit of humor. He said that even judges sometimes nod off in the afternoon when the lawyers are boring, and instructed the sheriff to wake him up, too, in the unlikely event that happened.

Andrew D. Levy, a Baltimore attorney who observed the action a few days last week, said while Sweeney has performed well, establishing a good rapport with the jurors so they perform well is his job.

“It doesn’t get him elected judge of the year,” Levy said. “It’s pretty core competency.”

Sweeney has also kept the attorneys in the case loose while refereeing their disputes.

Rohrbaugh got off on the wrong foot in his examination of Edward Anthony, a city housing employee and Dixon’s current boyfriend, by implying that he and Anthony had never met. (It wasn’t entirely his fault: Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Shelly Glenn was supposed to examine Anthony but fell ill Friday morning and went home.)

“We have?” Rohrbaugh said after Anthony answered his first question unexpectedly. “Then your memory’s better than mine.”

Before Rohrbaugh could recover, Sweeney interjected.

“Any more questions, Mr. Rohrbaugh?” Sweeney asked, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Sweeney also poked fun at Dixon’s defense team while addressing a persistent problem in the trial so far: witnesses not speaking loud enough to be heard by the jury. Sweeney asked everyone to speak louder than they thought appropriate — except Weiner, he said, referring to the lawyer’s outsized courtroom presence.

He’s even joked with witnesses, such as Rachel Lynch, a Best Buy employee who tracked some of the gift cards purchased and spent there. Though Lynch is a fast talker and the prosecutor examining her, Tamara Gustave, is, too, their discussion of how Lynch determined Dixon used the gift cards donated by developers was quite lengthy and, at time, tedious. Sweeney lightened the mood as he let Lynch leave.

“Please make sure that you don’t take any of the exhibits or cameras there,” Sweeney said, referring to the examples of items Dixon purchased that remained on the witness stand.

The only time Sweeney seemed really annoyed was during a motions hearing on Thursday morning when one of Dixon’s lawyers brought up the possibility of postponing the trial to remedy a discovery violation by the prosecutor. The judge called that idea “totally out of the question” and instead excluded the evidence of a third developer’s gift card contributions to Dixon.

“Well, no one does impatience like Dennis does,” Levy said. “He is very good at moving things along, I think.”