by FERN SHEN

       The state just rested in the trial of Sheila Dixon — a shocker, since they still hadn’t called their star witness, Dixon’s boyfriend, developer Ronald Lipscomb.

     How do we know about it? Live tweets from inside the courtroom. Reporters may not have cameras or microphones in there but they’ve been texting away madly. For those who want up-to-the-minute tweets, Jeff Quinton of Inside Charm City has assembled them all here .

     For political junkies, it’s addicting. WBAL reporter Jayne Miller, for instance, asked Dixon’s defense lawyer Arnold Weiner if he would be calling Lipscomb to testify and, according to the WBAL tweets, he “touched her on her arm and said, need a little mystery.” Fox followed soon after with the simple but newsy: “the defense is arguing for an acquittal.”

        Now, the judge has thrown out two of the seven counts in the indictment, the ones having to do with Lipscomb. This afternoon we’re going to hear from those character witnesses and by tomorrow, looks like, it’s in the hands of the jury.

     While we pause to allow the ”conventional wisdom” to play itself out  (should just be less than a day), a few thoughts on history and technology.

Another Maryland public official who stood trial in Courthouse East.

     Political corruption trials are nothing new for Courthouse East — it is, after all, the place where former Baltimore County Executive (and Maryland Governor and U.S. Vice President) Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest (“nolo contendre”) to charges of tax evasion.

     But there have been some technolgical updates to the familiar tableaux. Now, instead of allegations that public officials took envelopes of cash, as Agnew was said to have done, the charge is that a public official (Dixon) took envelopes of electronic cards. Those plastic rectangles are the equivalent of cash, but Rohrbaugh has had to work hard to to give them the scent of sleaze. He may not get his conviction, but he has surely hurt gift card sales in these parts, at least for a while. (Prediction: if the Holly Trolley rolls this holiday season, the kids will be getting wrapped presents or  candy, not Toys R Us cards.)

     And instead of the tale being told by reporters with notebooks filing stories for print that looked like this, you have reporters with iPhones, Blackberries and other texting tools, liveblogging the news, with posts that look like this.

Rob lang just called in a report to radio. Remember you can hear his reports each hour on 1090 wbal am seven m inutes ago
First witness is wanda watts, who met dixon at church about 30 years ago. She called dixon ‘one of the most honest people I know’ 8 minutes ago
Jury was briefed on the dismissals of 2 counts and given instruction on what to discount. Defense has opened its case 9 minutes ago
Jurors will also be given a list of exhibits they should eliminate from consideration. They should be back in shortly 22 minutes ago
That included circuit city and navy employees, randall finney, chelsey scott and anything to do with lipscomb/doracon 23 minutes ago

     There were some reports that there was tension in the press corps over liveblogging, with print journalists sticking to the court’s “no texting in the courtroom” rules, while broadcast and web people  texted away seemingly with impunity.