Sheila Dixon indicted? My eye’s still on Rohrbaugh

The mayor has been charged with, among other things, perjury, misconduct and the theft of $25 gift cards meant for needy children. A quick show of hands, people: How many of you out there think Dixon is REALLY stupid enough to jeopardize her career and freedom for some $25 gift cards?

Anyone? Anyone? Thought not.

But a majority of 23 grand jury members must have thought so. Rohrbaugh must think so too. Curiously enough, there have been no bribery charges lodged against Dixon, although you’d think with this business of the fur coats and developer Ronald Lipscomb’s name being thrown about, that such charges would be in the indictment.

Lipscomb HAS been charged with trying to bribe Councilwoman Helen Holt, who has been charged with accepting the bribe. Dixon, as expected, has denied all allegations against her. Arnold Weiner, her attorney, said at a Friday afternoon televised news conference that his client “has been investigated longer than anybody I’ve ever heard of except for the people in Guantanamo Bay.”

Weiner also accused Rohrbaugh of having a “single, personal obsession with Mayor Dixon.” When an investigation takes this long, goes through several grand juries before anything even close to an indictment is returned, it has to make you wonder.

Sometime last year, Dixon stopped being the focus of this investigation for me. She may or may not have taken gifts as bribes. She may or may not have acted improperly in office. That business of stealing $25 gift cards I’m dismissing out of hand.

But Dixon’s alleged misdeeds no longer concern me. I do, on the other hand, have some serious concerns about Rohrbaugh. I’ve got some questions for him too. We all should. And as a public servant paid with tax dollars — translation: We’re his boss — Rohrbough should have some answers for us.

1. What did this grand jury hear that previous grand juries didn’t?

2. What evidence did its members look at that members of the others didn’t?

3. What witnesses testified this time who didn’t testify before?

4. Did they give evidence that led to the indictments?

5. Why weren’t they called before now?

6. Why has this entire process taken so damned long?

Now before I’m accused of being a Dixon partisan, some disclosure is in order. I didn’t vote for her in the mayor’s race. I’m a registered Republican; before any Democrat gets my vote in this town ever again, his or her Republican opponent’s going to have to be the second coming of Josef Goebbels.

It would be easy for me to take a powder on this matter and just stick a bumper sticker on my car that reads “Don’t blame me; I voted Republican for mayor in 2007.” But that would be easy. And it wouldn’t be as much fun as looking at the possibility that, whatever Dixon’s sins, it’s Rohrbaugh who may have abused his power as a prosecutor.

During the previous grand jury session that heard evidence in the Dixon case — you know, the one that returned no indictment and, in essence, wasted our tax money — Rohrbaugh’s office subpoenaed, among others, Anthony McCarthy, who was the mayor’s spokesman when she was City Council president.

But McCarthy was never called to testify. When he and his attorney, A. Dwight Pettit, tried to get an answer to the question of when he WOULD testify, no such information was forthcoming from the state prosecutor’s office.

That crosses the line from mere chain-jerking to downright arrogance and comes close to an abuse of prosecutorial power. Don’t get me wrong: I do have my eye on Mayor Sheila Dixon while she’s in office.

But I’ve cast a more skeptical and disapproving one at the state prosecutor.

Gregory Kane is a columnist who has been writing about Baltimore and Maryland for more than 15 years. Look for his columns in the editorial section every Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at [email protected].