Former Baltimore Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean offered a tearful courtroom confession yesterday, describing her shame as disgraced city official and seeking forgiveness for stealing thousands in taxpayer dollars.
Dabbing a crumpled tissue to her eyes, McLean pleaded guilty to scheming to misappropriate more than $25,000 in public funds by hiring a fictitious employee and a phony research group. She also admitted that the money went to pay off her credit card bills, business debts, mobile phone charges and even for hardwood floors for her condominium.
Her guilty plea was a milestone in a drawn-out corruption scandal that left City Hall on edge and prompted months of legal one-upmanship. The hearing also provided an arena for McLean to end eight months of public silence with a mea culpa.
She stood, despite the judge's reassurance that she was not required to say anything, and said in a halting voice, "I am ashamed."
She added later in her statement, "I have always said I hate a thief. That's the way my parents taught me. I am here to say publicly I am [the] thief that I have been brought up to hate and detest."
Three months ago, a listless, unsteady McLean slumped in her seat as her lawyers sought a postponement of her trial. Yesterday, she appeared more poised in a white print silk dress and spoke in a clear voice, only occasionally faltering during the proceedings.
"In the months ahead," she said, "with God's help, I hope I can begin to learn how my living could be worthwhile to all the thousands and thousands of people whom I have let down."
McLean will be sentenced Dec. 15. She also must return to court next week, when Judge Donald J. Gilmore, a retired Carroll County circuit judge sitting in the city, will issue his verdict on separate charges that McLean arranged a $1 million city lease of the one-time headquarters of her travel agency. She pleaded not guilty to that indictment yesterday.
Under an agreement that led to yesterday's guilty plea, prosecutorsdropped a related count of official misconduct but are free to recommend anything up to the maximum punishment of 15 years in prison, a $1,000 fine and an order to pay restitution. State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli would not say what punishment he intends to recommend.
Defense lawyers for the 50-year-old former comptroller intend to oppose any jail time. A restitution plan is being drafted, said M. Cristina Gutierrez, McLean's attorney.
Ms. Gutierrez wants her client to be accepted into the court's Alternative Sentencing Unit, which could involve anything from strict probation to monitoring at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital.
McLean, who attempted suicide with a near-fatal overdose of prescription pills and alcohol in April, has been undergoing treatment for severe depression at the Towson psychiatric hospital.
Missing details supplied
Yesterday, the state prosecutor read a lengthy statement signed by McLean and her lawyers that revealed missing details in the theft scheme. It began in late September 1992, when McLean slipped a contract through the city government to hire a "Michele McCloud" as a consultant. She soon had effectively tripled the hourly salary of the phony employee and forged signatures to set up bank accounts for the nonexistent Resources for Women.
For 14 months, regular payments were sent to Salon Me'Chelle, a Northwest Baltimore beauty shop owned by the former comptroller's sister and brother-in-law. McLean withdrew money from the bank accounts to pay off $13,559 in credit card bills, $6,400 in outstanding debts from the defunct Four Seas & Seven Winds travel agency and $132.49 for parquet floors.
A state police handwriting expert concluded that McLean forged endorsements and signatures on at least 19 documents. The former comptroller personally authorized all of the invoices and asked her employees to witness already forged signatures of Michele McCloud and to prepare payment orders.
Elected officials and former associates of McLean expressed sadness and relief yesterday after she pleaded guilty. McLean had risen to the city's most powerful circles, from the City Council to comptroller.
"I think it's a sad day for city government and for all of us who are elected officials," said council President Mary Pat Clarke. "We all now want to put this issue behind us."
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was out of town and could not be reached. Others who knew McLean during her 11-year tenure at City Hall tried to focus on her contributions.
'She made a mistake'
"I'm glad it's been brought to a closure," said former 2nd District Councilman Nathaniel J. McFadden, who befriended McLean when she first won a 2nd District seat in 1983. "Jackie was a good public servant. She made a mistake, she admitted her mistake, and she's now in the process of redeeming herself."
The case has produced months of legal wrangling, including an acrimonious series of hearings in June that came to end when McLean was committed as a state mental patient. At that point, McLean was offered a chance to plead guilty with a one-year cap on any sentence. At one point, five City Council members drew criticism for meeting with two administrative judges to discuss the circumstances surrounding the case.
In mid-July, McLean retired from office with full benefits. She is receiving a pension of $23,850 a year and new medical benefits that she needed to continue her psychiatric treatment.
McLean pledged all of her assets toward medical bills that quickly exceeded $20,000. She and her husband, James, recently sold their three-story luxury condominium in the Colonnade. Estranged for some time, they also are now legally separated, Ms. Gutierrez said.
City officials were uncertain yesterday whether the former comptroller could continue receiving her pension now that she has pleaded guilty. All benefits paid to her during the first 12 months would be covered by money she has paid into the system. City Solicitor Neal M. Janey has been asked to determine whether her benefits should be stopped immediately.
Once regarded by many as a symbol of the success of black entrepreneurial women, McLean drew a crowd of supporters yesterday, including several well-known ministers. One called out "Amen" as she talked about her struggle "every minute of every day to find faith in God and human life."
"We stand on the gospel because the gospel is one of forgiveness and redemption," said the Rev. Daki Napata, associate pastor of Union Baptist Church. "And we're here because there's no question in my mind that if Mrs. McLean had been a white female, this type of overkill and sensationalism would not be the case."
The ministers sat beside McLean's friends and family members. Her daughter, Michelle, sat silently in the front row. Her husband took a seat in back and refused to talk to reporters.
After the hearing, the former comptroller would not say she devised the theft scheme. With a stunned look on her face, she was escorted out of the courtroom by her daughter.
Ms. Gutierrez explained that there were many reasons.
As the first black woman to be elected to the city's third-highest position, McLean was under pressure from her job and from her own high expectations, Ms. Gutierrez said.
McLean had struggled for at least three years with deep bouts of depression, a mental illness Ms. Gutierrez said has a history in the comptroller's family.
The McLeans' rocky marriage and mounting business woes exacerbated her hidden depression and led to the corruption, her lawyer said.
"Jackie is Catholic. This is difficult for her," Ms. Gutierrez said. "Shame is a reality, and she's acknowledging it. She has strong feelings of letting her family down.
"She is a classic example of somebody setting themselves up. She knew the [theft] was a release for the self-destructive part of her depression. She did it at a time when she was stressed. There was no cover-up on it. It was always a question of time when she would be discovered."
'I HAVE FELT SUCH SHAME...THAT I JUST WANTED TO DIE'
This is the most difficult thing that I have ever done in my life -- admitting what I have done and doing it publicly. I am ashamed. I have felt such shame and guilt and unworthiness over the last two years that I just wanted to die. I mean that dying was the only thing in the world I wanted to do. I do not think that many people here today will understand how much what I am admitting to you that I did makes me feel sorry and ashamed. I do not know the words to say how badly I felt and still feel.
We take for granted what we do and what we think we can never do. Over the last two years or more, I have lived each day with doing what I never before thought I was capable of doing. I have always said that I hate a thief. That is what my parents taught me. I am here today to say publicly that I am the thief I have been brought up to hate and detest.
Each day I struggle just to keep myself alive. That is what illness has brought me to. I am cursed to know in vivid detail the bad things my human condition has allowed me to do. Unfortunately, I have yet to learn for myself what wonderful things I might be capable of that I cannot now even imagine. I struggle every minute of every day to find faith in God and human life so that I might continue. For right now, I am left without hope and a sense of being alone.
To keep struggling each day for a reason to continue, I must get by this day. I must stand here and acknowledge acts I committed that I loathe to think I ever did. In the months ahead, with God's help, I hope I can begin to learn how my living could be worthwhile to all the thousands and thousands of people whom I have let down.