Best Buy "Reward Zone" card: how prosecutors connected the dots.

by MELODY SIMMONS and FERN SHEN

     The “reverse Robin Hood” trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon took off in Circuit Court today with an alternate juror fainting at the bench, a rep from Target unable to testify cooling his heels outside the courtroom and no shortage of smear jobs.

     In nearly two hours of opening statements, both prosecution and defense teams laid it out – including gift cards intended for the needy that were allegedly spent by Dixon on personal purchases like an Xbox, a leather hobo bag, a video camera, and groceries at Giant. Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh used a Power Point presentation to illustrate gift card details and receipts — and even the fact that she used that Giant gift card to buy a pint of blackberries, applesauce and milk.

     “When you are a public official, it is a breach of the public trust when you steal,” Rohrbaugh told the jury, as Dixon sat stoned faced nearby. “When you are a public servant and you steal from the needy, it is unspeakable.”

     The defense meanwhile gave notice that they will pursue a scorched earth attack that could singe their own client a bit, as they attempt to discredit her former boyfriend, developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, in part by dwelling on old — and new — details of their intimate affair.

     Dixon’s lead defense attorney Arnold Weiner acknowledged in his opening that Dixon used the cards for personal purchases but said the state cannot prove she ever believed they were intended for the poor. So what, according to the defense, did Dixon think these cards were? She considered them gifts to her, from Lipscomb, who purchased many of the cards Dixon is accused of stealing, Weiner told jurors.

Developer and ex Dixon boyfriend, Ronald Lipscomb.

Lipscomb, a politically-connected businessman and owner of Doracon Contracting, Inc. in east Baltimore, is expected to take the stand tomorrow morning.

     Weiner portrayed Lipscomb as a man who “sweet talked” Dixon into a romantic relationship in late 2003, the year after she separated from her husband, and then “lavished” flowers and gifts on her, most of them given under the tag “anonymous.”

     The gift cards from Lipscomb were “given to her for her use at her discretion” by Lipscomb, Weiner said, and paid for with cash obtained after a Doracon company check was cashed at a city liquor store, with “business expense” listed on the memo line, with no mention of spending for charitable gift cards.

      It was part of a retail-centered amorous pattern: For her 50th birthday in December 2003, Lipscomb gave Dixon a $2,000 gift certificate to Mano Swartz, the Towson furrier, for a mink coat, Weiner charged.

     “He went and had an employee buy it and had the employee use his credit card,” Weiner said. “He had his employee write a check to the employee’s credit card company . . . to record the whole transaction not as a gift but as ‘office expenses.’” Weiner said he will show that the gift cards from Lipscomb were the same kind of thing.

     If Rohrbaugh’s opening was light on evidence that Dixon knew the cards were intended for the needy, it was bristling with records meant to show that she used them for personal items, several of which were later found in her house, he said. Pictures of the video camera and case and cassettes she allegedly purchased, found during the raid on her home, flashed on the screen.

     Rohrbaugh dangled the actual receipts in front of jurors, one of them about 2 feet long. He took them through the whole tale of pre-holiday electronics-buying. He showed them records of an an employee of Lipscomb’s buying the Best Buy and Circuit City gift cards and others allegedly showing Dixon and her staffers ended up with the cards or the loot. In one instance, he said, a Baltimore city police detective who works security at City Hall got one of the cards. Some of the cards Dixon used to purchase a $400 Xbox 360 “Need for Speed Bundle” with the $60 two-year replacement plan, Rohrbaugh said.

     Listening at the witness table, Dixon, a pen in hand, pursed her lips and made occasional notes. Rohrbaugh constantly reminded the jury that the cards had been meant to go to needy individuals and children. He showed a picture of a Victoria’s Secret gift bag, found in Dixon’s house, with one of the gift cards unspent after a year. “That’s not a bag that you give little children” Rorhbaugh said. Total value of the items she allegedly bought? About $1,500.

     Rohrbaugh solved one mystery about the prosecution’ case: how they traced purchases made with a gift card, since they can be used like cash, leaving behind no paper trail. Dixon, it turns out, has a “Reward Zone” card which gives cardholders bonus points they can redeem for other purchases. Those “Reward Zone” purchases do leave a trail and Dixon made sure to apply the card to many of those gift card purchases.

     Lipscomb’s not the only developer-bearing-gifts in this case. Yet another stack of cards, these donated in 2005 by developer Patrick Turner, also took the spotlight today. How did Weiner explain Dixon using those cards? They were delivered to City Hall in an unmarked envelope, Weiner said, and Dixon confused them thinking they had come from Lipscomb. Why? According to Weiner, Lipscomb often sent her flowers and other gifts anonymously, as part of his “chasing after her.”

      At another point in his opening, Weiner said that, during the peak of their relationship when Lipscomb and Dixon were “burning up the telephone lines,” on one New Year’s Eve speaking for 42 minutes. Weiner, and many in the room, snickered at this.

    Prosecutors wanted to include in their opening arguments gift-card giving from a third developer, Glenn Charlow. But presiding judge Dennis M. Sweeney rejected that motion, ruling that key information about the Charlow allegations had come too late and would be prejudicial. Prosecutors have said that Charlow gave Dixon $500  in Target gift cards for use by her church but that the cards ended being given to staff.