Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby was sentenced Thursday to one year of home detention for perjury and mortgage fraud, with the judge also ordering her to forfeit her Florida condo.
U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby spared Mosby from prison, as prosecutors and sentencing guidelines called for, choosing instead to impose a punishment of three years of supervised release. Griggsby also ruled that Mosby has to complete 100 hours of community service while on probation.
Mosby’s supporters cheered in the courtroom when Griggsby announced the sentence as the former prosecutor dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
“The court agrees these are very serious offenses and that this conduct displays a pattern of dishonesty,” Griggsby told Mosby. “This dishonesty also occurred when you held the highest office for a prosecutor in the City of Baltimore.”
While Mosby’s crimes didn’t have “victims in a traditional sense,” Griggsby said that Baltimore suffered because of Mosby’s actions. The judge added that Mosby betrayed people who looked up to her in the community and that the powerful office she once held suffered while the “cloud” of her indictment loomed.
Griggsby lamented Mosby’s apparent “lack of contrition” — as evidenced by a national media blitz in which Mosby decried her prosecution as politically motivated — but credited her record of public service. Mosby’s children weighed most heavily on Griggsby in determining a sentence, she said.
“Most significantly to this court,” the judge said, “you are a mother of two daughters.”
After the sentencing, Mosby’s supporters chanted and sang songs in celebration outside the federal courthouse in Greenbelt. Clad in a white suit and flanked by her two daughters, Mosby thanked the people who stood by her during the grueling case.
“This is not over,” Mosby said. “But God was here today and I know he’s with me. He touched the heart of this judge and has allowed me to go home to my babies.”
The sentence capped an approximately four-hour hearing featuring arguments from her defense lawyers and prosecutors, as well as the testimony of more than a dozen people who spoke in Mosby’s support.
Federal prosecutors had sought 20 months in prison, while Mosby’s lawyers asked for probation. Sentencing guidelines called for incarceration between 12 and 18 months.
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 because of her profile in the city.
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 under the federal CARES Act, Congress’ first COVID-19 relief package.
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.
Federal Public Defender James Wyda noted that none of Mosby’s crimes related to her role in office or the misuse of public funds. He said his client had been punished enough given she lost her job and her marriage, likely stands to have her law license revoked and endured grueling trials 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 after consulting with her lawyers. Wyda said his client should not be penalized for pursuing her legal rights to appeal her convictions and seek a presidential pardon.
The public defender’s remarks followed testimony from relatives, former colleagues, people she freed from prison and prominent attorneys who’ve become supporters. Begging Griggsby for leniency, they portrayed Mosby, who served two terms as state’s attorney, as a doting mother and trailblazing prosecutor.
“I’m here to request your leniency in sentencing Ms. Mosby in consideration of her remarkable efforts to reform what is a largely dysfunctional Baltimore City criminal justice system,” said Michael Schatzow, who served as chief deputy state’s attorney under Mosby.
Mosby tapped Schatzow as the lead prosecutor when she charged officers in connection with the 2015 death of Freddie Gray from injuries sustained in Baltimore Police custody. None of the cases resulted in convictions, but the case served as a flashpoint in the city and a launching pad for Mosby’s national profile.
Many supporters echoed the belief that Mosby was targeted for prosecution because of her decision to charge those officers and her other efforts to reform the criminal justice system, which were at times unpopular. Nick Mosby, her now ex-husband who lost his campaign for reelection as Baltimore City Council President last week, attended the sentencing and said after that he remained perplexed by the federal investigation into his then-wife.
“It’s been a very long, very expensive and grueling process for my family,” he said.
Before sentencing, Marilyn Mosby made several media appearances, portraying herself as a victim of a prosecution motivated by political animus and racial bias. Griggsby shot down that argument when defense attorneys raised it in the case previously. But in court Thursday, supporters repeated Mosby’s claims.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin 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.
During his argument, Assistant United State’s Attorney Sean 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.”
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.
“As always, we respect the judgment of the court,” Barron said in a statement.
In court, Delaney seized on Mosby’s pre-sentencing media campaign, arguing that statements Mosby made about her case showed she lacked remorse for her crimes and respect for the legal system.
“Marilyn Mosby is unremorseful. She has no regard for the truth,” Delaney told Griggsby.
At one point Thursday, Griggsby asked Delaney whether there were 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 responded that the citizens of Baltimore were 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 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.
Although Griggsby went against prosecutors’ recommendation for prison time, the judge granted the government’s request to make Mosby give up her Florida condo, which the defense described as her “only major asset.”
Prosecutors argued the property represented proceeds of crimes, and Griggsby noted 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,” the judge said.
Griggsby 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.
Mosby’s lawyers asked Griggsby to hold off on that mandate pending her appeal.
After the hearing, Mosby’s supporters said they will continue pursuing a presidential pardon. Nearly 80,000 people signed an online petition supporting Mosby’s request for clemency.
