Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon will leave office Feb. 4, part of a plea deal that brings a years-long corruption investigation to a close and ends the tenure of the city’s first female mayor, reports the Baltimore Sun. Dixon, 56, will be sentenced both for a guilty plea she entered in a perjury case and for her embezzlement conviction last month. She will keep her $83,000 pension, which she could begin collecting the moment she steps down, and her criminal record will be wiped clean if she completes the terms of her probation within four years.
Dixon will turn over power to City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake An agreed-upon sentence of “probation before judgment” in both cases, her attorney Arnold Weiner said, “was necessary for her to preserve the pension – the very substantial pension that she spent 20-plus years of her life earning and would have been lost were a judgment of conviction entered against her.” On the perjury charge, Dixon pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine, meaning that she did not admit guilt but acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her.