Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s career reached the stars before crashing back to earth. She rose to national prominence when her office criminally charged Baltimore officers in connection with the 2015 police in-custody death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man.
Baltimore’s Black community praised Mosby for her courage to demand police accountability, even though she failed to convict any of the officers. Liberals also applauded her reform efforts, such as declining to prosecute low-level crimes like marijuana possession.
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But Mosby’s career quickly spiraled down amid investigations into her private businesses’ tax reporting and, ultimately, a federal criminal indictment.
On Thursday, she faced a federal judge for sentencing in her perjury and mortgage fraud convictions, which her supporters say unfairly targeted a progressive Black prosecutor.
The Associated Press reports that instead of prison time, U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby sentenced Mosby to 12 months of home confinement, 100 hours of community service, and three years of supervised release.
Is this sentence an opportunity for redemption?
A relieved Mosby and her two daughters met with supporters after the hearing, as civil rights attorney Ben Crump led a chant of “Justice for Marilyn” in the background. After her daughters spoke, Mosby stepped to the microphone and began her comments by quoting Bible scripture about trusting God.
“I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you,” an emotional Mosby said. “Thank you for the fight. Thank you to everyone who signed the petition (for a presidential pardon). Thank you for the federal public defender team that so eloquently advocated on my behalf.”
Mosby, who has maintained her innocence, was indicted in January 2022 on perjury and mortgage fraud charges. Authorities held separate trials on allegations that she lied about a COVID-19 financial hardship to access restricted retirement funds to purchase two vacation homes in Florida. Prosecutors said she then lied on loan paperwork to obtain a better rate.
At the sentencing hearing, the judge suggested that the federal prosecutor was overzealous in calling for a 20-month prison sentence because there was no victim and Mosby didn’t steal from tax-payer funds.
Crump told the judge that it would be a “grave injustice” to imprison Mosby for a victimless “minor white-collar crime.” He suggested that prosecutors like her are targeted for pursuing equality in the criminal justice system. “The prosecution of Marilyn Mosby seems intended to send a chilling message to our progressive prosecutors,” Crump added.
Mosby was ahead of her generation of a big-city reform-minded prosecutor, leading a wave of other progressives like Kim Foxx in Chicago, according to Slate’s Joel Anderson. She borrowed a page from Vice President Kamala Harris’ service as San Francisco district attorney and promoted, among other policies, a diversionary program for first-time nonviolent offenders and a community prosecution model.
Mosby’s fight hasn’t ended with the judge’s sentence. She plans to appeal her conviction and has applied to President Biden for a presidential pardon.
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