Former Baltimore Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean's yearlong ordeal ended yesterday when a judge spared her a final disgrace and placed her on probation instead of sending her to prison.
Mrs. McLean, once a successful businesswoman who rose to become Baltimore's first black female comptroller, bowed her head and wept yesterday afternoon after Judge Donald J. Gilmore suspended a three-year sentence and ordered her on probation for the next five years.
He also ordered her to perform 750 hours of community service for scheming to steal more than $25,000 in taxpayer funds and failing to disqualify herself from a proposed city lease of the vacant headquarters of her travel agency.
Mrs. McLean used the money to pay off credit card bills and outstanding business debts.
"You have sinned. There is no question about it," said Judge Gilmore, a retired Carroll County judge presiding over her corruption case. "You are being punished, and you have been punished. But there comes a time when enough is enough, and I think that time has come today."
Family members and friends of Mrs. McLean smiled in relief and hugged each other. Several patients who befriended Mrs. McLean during her seven months at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson rushed up to hug the former comptroller and her defense lawyer.
Judge Gilmore listed several factors that helped shape his decision, including the former comptroller's admission of guilt, her resignation from office and her public humiliation in the drawn-out scandal.
Mrs. McLean already had repaid the $26,961, including interest, that she stole over 14 months in office by setting up several bogus contracts.
By exceeding the sentencing guidelines to impose a two-year prison term for her thievery and an additional year for her role in the city real estate deal, the judge made it clear that he considered her actions a breach of public trust, but he quickly suspended the prison sentences, saying he did not believe prison would be appropriate.
He also encouraged Mrs. McLean, who remains depressed and under psychiatric care, to help others who suffer from mental illnesses.
"Despite your own feelings of worthlessness and despair, it's the court's impression that nothing could be further from the truth," the judge said, referring to letters he received on her behalf from patients and staff at Sheppard Pratt. "You have given them comfort and support. That is not the work of a useless person, and you should know this."
Before Judge Gilmore delivered his verdict, Mrs. McLean stood up and repeated, in a halting voice, that she felt deep shame and remorse for betraying the tens of thousands of voters who elected her comptroller. She said she still does not understand her motives in stealing money while she was the city's financial guardian.
"I'm extremely ashamed of my actions, so much so that I cannot drive through the city of Baltimore without crying," she said. "I honestly do not believe that I will ever, ever be able to forgive myself. I'm sorry."
State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli argued for sentencing the former comptroller to one year in prison, with six months suspended, to send a message to the public that defrauding the government would not be taken lightly. Thefts by a high-ranking public official "engender mistrust of government" he said.
"If she has failed as comptroller, if she failed as a public official, it's her fault," he said.
NTC Mr. Montanarelli said he believes that Mrs. McLean suffers from depression, but he suggested that she was manipulative and was using her illness to avoid a prison sentence. He said she simply was continuing the pattern she had established in falsifying invoices, forging signatures and slipping through contracts in her theft scheme.
Mrs. McLean's lawyer, M. Cristina Gutierrez, bristled at that assertion. Ms. Gutierrez, who at one point suggested home detention as an alternate sentence for her client, called for a merciful sentence.
'Broken already'
"She is broken already," Ms. Gutierrez said. "We don't need to destroy her."
Yesterday's verdict brought to a close a drawn-out corruption scandal that captured the attention of many in Baltimore and prompted months of legal one-upmanship.
It was at this time last year when Mrs. McLean's career began to unravel, when city officials raised questions about a $1 million lease she had helped arrange for the former headquarters of Four Seas & Seven Winds Inc., the travel agency she ran with her husband, James.
What followed was a widely publicized personal and political demise that included her resignation and hospitalization for depression, a near-fatal overdose of prescription pills in April and the breakup of her marriage.
Her fragile emotional state contrasted sharply with the identity she had cultivated. She promoted herself as a knowledgeable businesswoman and bypassed the city's political machines to twice claim a seat on the City Council. Many thought the mayoralty was within her reach.
Yesterday morning, hours before she learned Mrs. McLean's fate, her daughter, Michelle, and best friend, Mary Sue Welcome, portrayed the former comptroller as a woman whose public facade of cool professionalism masked an anguished, lonely reality.
For a long while, Mrs. McLean's independence and wealth served her well. But in 1991, when she became a household name by rising from the council to comptroller, her business foundered in the recession.
In September 1993, she and her husband sold Four Seas to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts.
It was then that Mrs. McLean failed to disqualify herself from voting on a proposed city lease of the vacant travel agency building, prompting an investigation by the state prosecutor.
Two months after she left City Hall in disgrace, Mrs. McLean became a criminal defendant when a city grand jury indicted her on felony theft and official misconduct charges. But her court hearings were delayed for months.
Suicide threat
A drawn, unsteady Mrs. McLean emerged from seclusion in June as her lawyer tried to delay her trial. Mrs. McLean, barely recognizable as the powerful politician she had once been, began shaking in the courtroom and was involuntarily committed as a state mental patient the next morning after threatening to kill herself.
Her lawyers obtained a postponement, but not before a delegation of council members tried to intervene on her behalf.
Amid criticism, one of the judges who met with the five council members said later that he regretted the meeting because it created a troubling appearance.
In July, Mrs. McLean quietly retired from office with a full pension of $23,850 a year.
It is unclear whether she will be able to continue receiving those benefits, since she is now a convicted felon.
The decision is up to the city's pension board, but Judge Gilmore suggested yesterday that she should not lose her pension for her years of service, except for those she spent as comptroller.
A tearful Mrs. McLean pleaded guilty in September to hiring the phony consultant "Michele McCloud" and a bogus research group. She also was convicted of official misconduct for her role in the lease.
The theft charge exposed her to a maximum of 15 years in prison, a $1,000 fine and restitution, but under nonbinding sentencing guidelines, Mrs. McLean, who has no prior criminal record, was to have received a sentence ranging from probation to a year in prison.
Penalties for the official misconduct charge were not specified by statute.
Mrs. McLean's family and friends said she already had served time at Sheppard Pratt and been punished by her humiliation.
"We're just relieved that she's still on the planet," said her sister, Georgene Fountain, as she left the courthouse in downtown Baltimore yesterday.