After a week in which now-former Mayor Sheila Dixon was feted and celebrated by her colleagues as if she was going off on a well-deserved retirement rather than resigning in disgrace, it took Judge Dennis Sweeney to finally say what no other public official in this state has been willing to: Sheila Dixon was guilty, the evidence against her was overwhelming, and she brought shame onto Baltimore that was only compounded by the unwillingness of other city officials to condemn her in any way.
At Ms. Dixon's sentencing, Judge Sweeney read a lengthy prepared statement in which he defended the plea deal that will allow her to clear her criminal record and to retain her pension. The judge said being forced to leave such a high office that Ms. Dixon had fought for two decades to attain was a heavy penalty and "a badge of dishonor that she will live with for the rest of her life" -- and added that absent a plea deal, litigation could have dragged the matter on for months or years. Given the tenacity of Ms. Dixon's attorneys, led by Arnold Weiner, Judge Sweeney is no doubt right about that. Ms. Dixon did not speak after the hearing, but Mr. Weiner did, and he betrayed no sense that his defenses of his client, as flimsy as they were loud, had been discredited. There is no doubt that he and Ms. Dixon would have fought on and would have left the city in a leadership vacuum for the foreseeable future.
Judge Sweeney took aim at the claims made by Ms. Dixon and her attorneys that the prosecution and guilty verdict against her were polticially motivated, fueled by media hype or the product of jury incompetence or misconduct. The judge concluded that "from what I saw at trial and in the motions before the court, the cases against Ms. Dixon were strong, if not indeed overwhelming." The jury, he said, was kind to convict her of only one count, and had she gone to trial for perjury, Judge Sweeney said a conviciton "would have been a virtual certainty." The mayor's downfall was not, as she has claimed, the result of prosecutors pressuring her former boyfriend to lie. It was the product of her own illegal acts, uncovered in a painstaking investigation, supported by credible witnesses and documents. Ms. Dixon took gifts and did not report them, as she was required to do by law. And she solicited gift cards from developers under the guise that they would help poor children but spent them on herself. Her defense provided no evidence to counter those facts.
It did, however, engage in an extremely distasteful effort to discredit the jury. Judge Sweeney, to his credit, defended the 12 men and women who sacrificed weeks of their lives for the trial and deliberations. Indeed, their conduct was not perfect. Jurors communicated outside of court in ways they should not have done, and some did not give complete answers during jury selection. But the notion presented by Ms. Dixon's lawyers that they somehow conspired against her is absurd. As Judge Sweeney noted, "Many commentators glibly predicted even before jury selection began that a hung jury split along lines of race, sex or income would be the result. In contrast, from what I saw in this case, all of the jurors took the case very seriously, put aside their personal biases and worked very hard together as a team to resolve the case based on the evidence in the case and the law." Baltimore could not have asked for more dedicated service from its citizens, and the fact that the mayor of the city, through her attorneys, smeared their honest work did a disservice to the very notion of community.
The point Judge Sweeney made that is most important going forward is his caution that the current attention being paid to restoring ethics in City Hall not be a passing fad. The new mayor, Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, has offered an important proposal for reforming the ethics board, and her former colleagues on the City Council are drafting additional ethics legislation.
But the judge has reason to be concerned based on the utter unwillingness of any officials to publicly condemn Ms. Dixon's acts. In particular, the judge singled out an affidavit City Solicitor George Nilson provided for Ms. Dixon's attorneys that had the effect of backing up Mr. Weiner's arguments that developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, who received millions in tax breaks from Baltimore, did not count under the ethics code's definition of someone doing business with the city -- thus, Mr. Weiner contended, the mayor was free to take whatever gifts from him that she chose. "The official position of the city was not met, to my knowledge, by any dissent or outrage by other elected city officials at the time it became public," Judge Sweeney said.
Mr. Nilson has many admirers among the city's movers and shakers who would like to see him retained in the Rawlings-Blake administration. He is intelligent and well qualified and has performed decades of honorable service to the city and state. By all accounts, the city law department functions better than it has in years. However, if he wants to keep his job, he must answer for that memorandum.
Hours after Judge Sweeney spoke, Ms. Rawlings-Blake took the oath of office in a small, subdued ceremony. That was the appropriate choice. The lifting of the cloud of corruption over City Hall is an occasion to be celebrated, but not today. Judge Sweeney's comments underscored the heavy burden Ms. Rawlings-Blake faces to restore citizens' trust in their government. The best way she could do that was by quietly going to work.