Marilyn Mosby Sentencing Set As Biden Resists Calls To Pardon Baltimore’s Former Top Prosecutor
Marilyn Mosby is pictured in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, where Freddie Gray was arrested, on August 24, 2016, in Baltimore, Maryland. | Source: Larry French / Getty
Baltimore’s former top prosecutor is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday after calls for a presidential pardon for a federal mortgage fraud conviction have gone immediately unanswered.
Marilyn Mosby is facing as many as 40 years in prison after being convicted earlier this year, prompting her and a growing number of powerful advocates to mount a major campaign for President Joe Biden to issue a formal pardon to make sure she avoids being locked up.
Thus far, Biden has remained silent on the issue and the White House has been cagey in its response to questions about the president’s intentions in the case that critics have called a “witch hunt” and a “wrongful prosecution.”
A full pardon application for Mosby was submitted last week to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has described Mosby, 44, as being a victim of retaliatory efforts by political adversaries who resented her work holding the police accountable, like with the infamous Freddie Gray case.
CBS News reported that federal prosecutors pushed back against those notions and claimed in their court filing that “Mosby has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that she accepts no responsibility for her actions, has no respect for this court’s rulings and lacks honesty with the public and candor before this court.”
Experts have predicted that it’s doubtful Mosby would be given the maximum sentence as federal prosecutors have asked for a prison term of at least 20 months. Mosby’s attorneys are pushing for no prison time and instead a sentence that includes only probation.
What happened to Marilyn Mosby?
Mosby was originally hit with four felony counts in 2022 related to allegations centered on a withdrawal from her own retirement fund in 2020. The exact language of the indictment alleged that Mosby “willfully and knowingly” lied about experiencing “adverse financial consequences stemming from the Coronavirus” and that she intentionally lied on a loan application because she was in arrears to the IRS.
Specifically, Mosby was accused of taking out $40,000 from her 401K because she had a financial hardship caused by the pandemic. The Baltimore Sun reported at the time that Mosby earned a $10,000 pay raise that year to bring her annual salary up to $248,000. After she withdrew $36,000, Mosby used it for a down payment on a property in Florida that she said would be a second home in an effort to lower interest rates, the indictment claimed.
Mosby’s lawyer when she was initially charged claimed the indictment was the result of a political witch hunt and that the charges were “rooted in personal, political and racial animus” while she was seeking reelection just months before Election Day — claims that her federal public defender maintained during the trial that was relocated from Baltimore to Greenbelt in Prince George’s County, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
The federal investigation began in 2021 and was initially focused on Mosby and her husband, then-Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, for potential campaign finance violations. At the time, it was reported that subpoenas were being issued for the couple’s financial information and an investigation into their alleged link to city churches.
In particular, Union Baptist Church in Baltimore was subpoenaed and its lawyer said at the time that investigators wanted to know how much money the Mosbys give to the house of worship.
“I spend more monthly at Starbucks than the Mosbys gave during the time period,” said Robert Fulton Dashiell, the attorney representing the Mosbys back then, adding that the total was less than $200.
Around the same time, independent news outlet the Baltimore Brew published a report claiming then-State’s Attorney Mosby “paid $11,000 to a Washington law firm that acted on [her] personal behalf, which is a prohibited practice under Maryland election law.”
There have been a number of previous instances where the Mosbys found their actions under heightened scrutiny, including suspicions of campaign finance violations when it came to receiving gifts, paying taxes and traveling, for example. However, none of the accusations have ever been proven.
Mosby was also convicted in November for committing perjury by making false statements on a COVID-19 loan application during the pandemic. In that case, Mosby was found guilty of two counts, with each count carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Mosby’s rise to fame
Mosby first rose to national prominence during the uproar over the in-custody death of Freddie Gray, a Black man who was arrested in Baltimore for possession of a small pen knife in 2015. He died in transport under questionable circumstances. Mosby called for the indictment of six city cops but ultimately dropped the charges against the remaining three officers involved. Mosby faced tough criticism after the three other officers involved were found not guilty.
Mosby called for system reform after the failure to find any criminal involvement in Gray’s death.
“We know that Freddie Gray did not kill himself,” she said at the time and stood by the medical examiner’s determination that his death was a homicide.
SEE ALSO:
Marilyn Mosby’s ‘Bogus’ Federal Indictment Is Rooted In ‘Racial Animus,’ Her Attorney Says
Thanks To Trump, Black Women Prosecutors Have The Added Burdens Of Racist, Gendered Attacks
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