A Second Baltimore Legislative Immunity Decision: There Are Limits!

There are limits on the legislative immunity of local government
officials, according to a decision yesterday by the Baltimore Circuit
Court in the Dixon case (attached; see below), involving the mayor of
Baltimore at the time she was president of the city council.<br>
<br>

The court rejected Dixon's motion to dismiss a second round of perjury
charges (I discussed the motion in a recent <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/next-stage-baltimore-legislative-immu…; target="”_blank”"><b>blog
post</b></a>). The court found that a witness's testimony regarding meetings
outside of the council did not merit dismissal:
<ul>Whether one denotes the very limited
testimony provided before the Grand Jury in this case as
“non-substantive”, or merely “incidental to the legislative process”,
or only concerning the status of the Defendant, it does not rise in the
final analysis to the level of invading the core legislative immunity
enjoyed by the Defendant. As a result, it does not form the basis for
the drastic remedy of dismissal with prejudice of an otherwise valid
indictment.
</ul>

The court goes on to say that even if it were a violation of
legislative immunity, this testimony was too minimal to merit dismissal:

<ul>Even assuming that there was a
violation of the legislative immunity doctrine in the grand jury
process, dismissal of the Indictment would not be warranted. The
Court’s prior dismissal was premised on the fact that the wording of
the indictment and the grand jury process was permeated with violations
of the privilege which required the extraordinary step of dismissal.
</ul>
And then the court leaves the door open for a later finding that the
evidence violates the council member's legislative immunity:

<ul>the State has indicated that it may not
even use the supposedly offensive evidence at trial. If this is the
case, the issue of violation of the privilege will be avoided
altogether. If the State does decide to use the evidence, the Court
remains open to further argument in limine or at the time of the offer
of the evidence at trial to review and reconsider the preliminary
ruling made here as to the applicability of the legislative privilege.
</ul>
This decision is hardly earth-shattering, but it's so rare these days
to have any judicial decision that is not fully in support of broad
legislative immunity, that does not put a council member's "rights" far
ahead of the public's.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
---</p>