A former top prosecutor in Baltimore City is scheduled to be sentenced this week on charges of lying about his personal finances to gain unauthorized access to retirement funds during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The sentencing of former Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby is scheduled to begin Thursday in federal court in Greenbelt, a Maryland suburb of the nation’s capital.
Two jurors separately convicted Mr. Mosby of perjury and mortgage fraud after a trial involving his personal property.
Mr. Mosby, 44, gained national prominence in 2015 for indicting six Baltimore Police Department officers in the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who was fatally shot while in police custody.
Gray’s death sparked riots and protests in the city.
After the three officers were acquitted, Mosby’s office The charges were dropped. against three other officers.
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Mosby withdrew $90,000 from Baltimore City’s deferred compensation plan.
She used the money to put down payments on vacation homes in Kissimmee and Longboat Key, Florida.
Prosecutors alleged that Mosby fraudulently accessed funds provided by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act by falsely claiming that the pandemic had hurt his side travel business.
Mosby’s lawyer argued that he had the legal right to withdraw the money and use it as he pleased.
Federal prosecutors recommended a 20-month prison sentence for Mosby, who served two terms as a Baltimore state prosecutor. She lost her re-election attempt after her indictment in 2022.
“MS. Mosby was indicted and convicted not because of politics or policy, but because he chose to repeatedly violate the law.” The prosecutor wrote.
Mosby’s lawyers asked the judge to release her from jail.
He is the only public official in Maryland to be charged with a federal crime that “involves no victim, no economic loss, and no use of public funds.”
“Prison is not justice for Marilyn Mosby,” her lawyers wrote.
Mosby applied for a presidential pardon earlier this month, and the Congressional Black Caucus expressed support for her cause in a letter to President Joe Biden, The Baltimore Sun reported.
U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Grigsby agreed to move Mosby’s trial from Baltimore to Greenbelt, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mosby’s attorneys argued that he would not receive a fair trial in Baltimore because of years of negative media coverage in the city.
