Baltimore’s mayor convicted of taking charity gift cards

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore’s mayor was convicted Tuesday on a single charge of taking gift cards from a program intended for the city’s poor children and using them to buy electronics, including an Xbox video game system.

The misdemeanor charge could eventually lead to Sheila Dixon’s removal from office, but she said after the verdict she would return to city hall, and her attorneys said they would begin an appeal.

Her conviction of fraudulent misappropriation by a fiduciary carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, but prosecutors have not said yet whether they will seek jail time.

The jury acquitted her on three other counts, including felony theft, and failed to reach a verdict on a second count of misappropriation.

Jurors deliberated more than six days before finding the Democrat guilty of the single count: Sometime between mid-December 2005 and late January 2006, when she was city council president, she solicited at least $525 in gift cards from developer Patrick Turner and bought electronics at Best Buy and knickknacks at Target.

Prosecutors portrayed Dixon as a corrupt official who used the $25 gift cards on shopping sprees for items including an Xbox, a PlayStation 2 and a video camera found in a raid of her home.

Defense lawyers had argued that Dixon thought gift cards delivered anonymously to her office were personal gifts from developer Ronald Lipscomb, a married man who was pursuing her romantically with presents, including an anonymous bouquet. Dixon, who is divorced, has acknowledged having had an affair with Lipscomb.

A juror who identified herself only as Shawana told reporters after the verdict that a key piece of evidence was Turner’s testimony that the gift cards he bought were meant for children.

Under state law, Dixon would be suspended if the conviction is related to her public duties and responsibilities and involves moral turpitude — something her lawyers may contest. She would be removed permanently if she loses all appeals. City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake would be elevated to the mayor’s office, and remaining council members would pick a new president.

The suspension would be effective upon sentencing, according to a 1977 state attorney general’s opinion.

The corruption probe began nearly four years ago, when Dixon was city council president. Three of the charges stemmed from when she was mayor, but she was acquitted on two and the jury hung on the third.

Despite the investigation, Baltimore’s first black female mayor remains popular in Maryland’s largest city of about 630,000. She was praised in her first year in office for presiding over a drop in the city’s homicide rate to a 20-year low, strengthening a recycling program and suing lending giant Wells Fargo for allegedly singling out black home buyers for risky subprime mortgages.

Dixon critics point to a pattern of behavior that suggests she thinks rules don’t apply to her. When she became city council president in 1999, the state ethics commission advised her to step down from her part-time state government job due to potential conflicts of interest. Dixon kept the second job for more than two years.

She also steered city business to a company that employed her sister. And the city paid Dixon’s campaign chairman, without a contract, to do computer work at city hall.

She faces a separate trial March 1 on perjury charges stemming from accusations she didn’t report gifts from Lipscomb, including $4,000 she allegedly used to pay her American Express bill.