Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby was sentenced Thursday to one year of home detention for her perjury and mortgage fraud convictions, and ordered to forfeit her Florida condo.
U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby handed down a sentence of three years of supervised release, opting against sending Mosby to prison. Prosecutors had sought 20 months in prison.
Griggsby’s decision followed an approximately four-hour hearing during which prosecutors asked for prison time and Mosby’s lawyers requested probation.
While Mosby was state’s attorney when she perjured herself and committed mortgage fraud, Federal Public Defender James Wyda noted none of Mosby’s crimes related to her role in office. He said Mosby had been punished enough given she lost her job, likely stands to have her law license revoked and endured a grueling trial that put her private life into the limelight.
“Jail is not a just sentence for Ms. Mosby, her family or the community,” Wyda told Griggsby.
He also said that sending Mosby to prison would inflict “extraordinary trauma” on her daughters, citing letters the defense submitted from the children’s therapist and a scholar who wrote about the impacts on children when their mothers are incarcerated.
Maintaining her innocence, Mosby declined an opportunity to speak in court. Wyda said Mosby should not be penalized for pursuing legal rights.
Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby with her attorney, public defender James Wyda, at her sentencing for perjury and mortgage fraud convictions presided over by U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby. (Kevin Richardson/Staff)
“Ms. Mosby maintains her innocence. That is her right,” Wyda said. “Ms. Mosby will appeal her convictions. That is also her right. Ms. Mosby is pursuing a pardon. That is also her right.”
The public defender’s comments came after more than a dozen people testified in Mosby’s support.
Ahead of sentencing, Mosby made several appearances on news programs, professing her innocence while saying she was a victim of politically-motivated and biased prosecutions.
Earlier Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Delaney pointed out several of Mosby’s public statements in an effort to label the former prosecutor as a liar who lacks remorse for her crimes.
“Marilyn Mosby is unremorseful. She has no regard for the truth,” Delaney told Griggsby, who ultimately will determine Mosby’s punishment.
Separate federal juries convicted Mosby of perjury and mortgage fraud after two trials held in Greenbelt. The former state’s attorney asked that they be moved from Baltimore.
In November, jurors determined that Mosby lied about suffering financial consequences because of the coronavirus pandemic, an assertion that enabled her to withdraw roughly $80,000 from her city retirement account early.
Prosecutors also accused her of being untruthful when she used the financial windfall for down payments on a pair of properties in Florida worth almost $1 million combined: an eight-bedroom house near Disney World and a condo on the Gulf Coast. She was charged with making false statements on loan applications for the homes — one count of fraud per property. Mosby’s lawyers argued successfully to have a separate trial for her real estate-related charges.
A jury in February acquitted Mosby on one count of mortgage fraud — clearing her of most of the lies she was accused of — but found her guilty of the other, determining she made a false statement about a “gift letter” she composed saying that her then-husband Nick Mosby gave her enough money to close on the condo in Longboat Key.
In court Thursday, Griggsby asked Delaney whether there are any victims in this case. The lenders who provided loans to Mosby took no action when they learned she lied on her mortgage applications, and the money she used to put down payments on the Florida properties came from her own retirement account.
Delaney said the citizens of Baltimore are the victims because Mosby committed perjury while she was the city’s top prosecutor.
“It hurts the public when public officials are found to have lied under oath,” he said.
Delaney also said the crimes are more serious because Mosby’s work as a prosecutor shows that she knows the importance of truth.
She exonerated men who she believed were wrongfully convicted of crimes. She published a “do not call” list of police officers with integrity issues that prevented them from testifying in court — a list that Mosby herself would have ended up on because of her perjury conviction, Delaney said.
“Marilyn Mosby does not care about facts, does not care about the law, does not care about the truth,” Delaney said. “In our country’s courtrooms, the truth still matters.”
Before the sentencing Thursday, Griggsby granted a request from prosecutors, ordering that Mosby give up the Florida condo. The judge cited Mosby’s mortgage fraud conviction in ruling she relinquish the property, noting that jurors in February found she lied on the loan application for that condo by falsifying a letter promising she would be gifted $5,000 to close on the property.
“The mortgage was obtained because Ms. Mosby obtained the gift letter,” Griggsby said.
One of Mosby’s lawyers, public defender Maggie Grace, asked Griggsby to put a hold on the forfeiture order pending Mosby’s appeal of her mortgage fraud conviction.
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The judge said the government had to return Mosby’s down payment on the property, which amounted to about 10% of the cost, and 10% of the condo’s appreciated value since she bought it. According to estimates from her attorneys, Mosby’s property nearly doubled in value to almost $890,000.
Prosecutors argued Mosby should have to forfeit the property and the entirety of its appreciated value.
“The defendant should not get to profit from her crimes merely because she invested the fraudulent proceeds,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Williamson told Griggsby.
Mosby’s lawyers said the government hadn’t proved there was a nexus between the property and the crimes Mosby was convicted of, and called the forfeiture overkill because there was no harm to the mortgage lender.
Griggsby agreed but found a different harm.
“The court shares the defense’s view there’s no apparent financial harm to the lender, but there had been a significant harm to the public because of Ms. Mosby’s role at the time, as both an elected official and an officer of the court,” the judge said.
Before court, a charter bus dropped off scores of Mosby supporters, who gathered in a prayer circle outside of the courthouse around 8:45 a.m. The former state’s attorney arrived around 9 a.m. sporting a crisp white suit and a short bob.
During a brief lunch break, well-known civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump spoke outside the courthouse, reading from remarks he will give in court as the defense presents its case at sentencing.
Crump said other white collar crimes have been met with a “slap on the wrist.”
“What is different here today is that underneath that white collar is the neck of a Black woman who dared to challenge the status quo,” Crump said.
Mosby has long held she is a victim of biased and politically-motivated prosecution, claims dubbed unfounded by the judge, and intensified that narrative in a series of media appearances ahead of her sentencing Thursday. A growing coalition of supporters echo her cries, alleging she is being persecuted because she advanced progressive policies as Baltimore’s top prosecutor.
Mosby, who served two terms as Baltimore state’s attorney, plans to appeal her convictions but also is seeking a full pardon from President Joe Biden. The Congressional Black Caucus urged Biden to pardon Mosby.
The office of Biden-nominated U.S. Attorney for Maryland Erek Barron led Mosby’s prosecution, although the investigation into Mosby predates him. Mosby wasn’t indicted until January 2022, nearly a year after Biden took office. Griggsby was also a Biden nominee.
During his argument, Delaney sought to dispel claims of ulterior motives underlying Mosby’s prosecution.
“In the United States of America, we do not prosecute people because of their politics,” he said. “And we do not cut them a break because of their politics either.”
