Having watched the first few episodes of Season 5 of The
Wire, and with the background research being undertaken by Detective Freeman
into Clay Davis’ corruption case, I thought it would be interesting to look
into past political corruption in Baltimore, and Maryland more widely. Former
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, former Prince George’s County Councilwoman Leslie
Johnson, and former Anne Arundel County Councilman Daryl Jones are all
prominent examples of Maryland politicians found guilty of corruption by a
court in recent years.
As
recently as February 2012, the issue of political corruption made the headlines
with Del.
Jolene Ivey seeking to draw up stricter laws on political corruption in
Maryland. These stricter laws are clearly needed – for the moment, little
formal procedures exist for what happens after a politician is found guilty of
corruption. Article XV of Maryland’s constitution calls for the removal from
office of elected officials convicted of a felony, but this does not appear to
be happening in practice. While all of the above names were indeed found
guilty, remarkably none of them were forced to leave office by law. Ms. Dixon
resigned under political pressure, as did Mr. Jones, but neither were forced by
law to leave office. The others remained in their positions. Former Mayor Dixon
claimed that "The
Wire does not depict Baltimore", yet that viewpoint becomes rather
farcical when her corruption case later came to light in a very similar fashion
to that of character Senator Clay Davis.
Sheila
Dixon was indicted by a Baltimore Grand Jury on twelve separate counts,
including four
counts of perjury, three counts of theft, three counts of fraudulent
misappropriations and two counts of misconduct.
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