by MELODY SIMMONS
Entering its third week today, the theft trial of Mayor Sheila Dixon seems at times to be more soap opera than legal proceeding.
As the jury of nine women and three men begin a sixth day of deliberations on the five remaining counts (of which Dixon can only be found guilty of three) at 9 a.m. today, The Brew offers some highlights from inside and outside of Courtroom 234.
– For instance, while jurors are receiving $50-per-day stipends, prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh and his team of five attorneys and investigators showed up in court for 10 hours on Wednesday gratis. The state was under a mandatory furlough day because of budget cuts.
— Mayor Dixon, her face often showing signs of strain at the lengthy deliberation, sounded a lighter note on Wednesday while debating Thanksgiving stuffing ingredients with some of her faithful supporters: oysters or no oysters?
– There was a stream of handwritten notes from jurors, reviewed by Judge Dennis M. Sweeney in his steady and deliberate manner. Requests have ranged from wanting a legal dictionary to needing lunch and a smoke break, to dismissal each day around 4:30. Juror #11, a blond who appeared in the jury box at the end of the day last Monday with a new, tight set of braids crowning her head, waved to the judge and bid a fond farewell to Sweeney after he released the panel for a four-day Thanksgiving holiday break late Wednesday.
– Relentless motions for mistrial by the defense team have injected points of drama in an often anti-climactic trial. Dale P. Kelberman, one of Dixon’s attorneys, pronounced the jurors hopelessly confused because of testimony and evidence thrown out by Sweeney after Dixon’s ex-boyfriend Ronald Lipscomb was dropped by the state as its star witness. “You’d have to be a Talmudic scholar to figure out the part of testimony they should consider versus that of what part of testimony they should not consider,” Kelberman argued. Nice try, but Sweeney rejected the motion within minutes.
– An 80-something courtroom observer who will give her name only as “Mrs. Miller” takes a bus and transfers to the subway daily while leaning on a metal cane in order to show support for Dixon. “I don’t know her but I really think it’s important to be here. I am glad my race has the top chance to get to the top position,” she said. “My mother and my grandmother didn’t have that opportunity.” Asked what she thought of the charges and the case, Mrs. Miller added: “I just think that maybe in some cases, she might have made some minor mistakes. I know some people before her in the job who made some MAJOR mistakes.”
– Then there’s the daily lunchtime shuffle: A clerk from Sweeney’s chambers collected a dozen filled orders for lunch last week at Au Bon Pain, a French bakery and deli near the courthouse. He was asked by an intrepid (and hungry and bored) reporter: Was the grub for the jury? “I can’t comment,” he said, of the top secret take out mission. “Let’s just say it’s heading for someone.” Nearby, Dixon’s defense team sat in the window of another sandwich shop watching the courthouse media circus on Calvert Street and monitoring their cell phones. Ironically, a red and green trolley car passed by their perch – the same trolley used for the mayor’s Holly Trolley gift card tour. (Five of the Toys ‘R Us gift cards were found in in Dixon’s house months later, she gave others to staffers.) In the meantime, television camera crews set up tarps and canopies to ward off a steady late-fall rain as they wait, wait, waitedf or word from the jury room. Word of buyouts and possible layoffs at Channel 2 add sadness to the already soggy spirits.
