After a federal jury convicted former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby on one of two charges of mortgage fraud Tuesday, a sampling of those who know their way around a courtroom offered a range of takeaways, but they generally agreed: This was always going to be a high-risk, high-stakes case.

“The federal system is somewhat punitive,” said Steven D. Silverman, a Baltimore-based criminal defense attorney. “If you go to trial and lose, the sentencing guidelines get worse.”

Silverman knows well what he calls “the playbook” for such federal prosecutions, particularly of former public officials. He defended former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, who pleaded guilty in 2019 to four counts of conspiracy and tax evasion in the “Healthy Holly” self-dealing scandal, forgoing a trial. She ultimately served less than two of the three years to which she was sentenced.

Mosby, 44, now has been convicted twice, by two different juries, in connection with her purchase of two homes in Florida. In November, she was found guilty on two counts of perjury for claiming the coronavirus pandemic created financial hardship, allowing her to withdraw $80,000 from her city retirement fund and use it to close on those properties.

She was convicted Tuesday of mortgage fraud for a “gift letter” in which she said her husband gave her a $5,000 gift so she could afford one of the closings. Prosecutors said that was actually her money, which she transferred to him and he sent back to her.

But jurors rejected the six other allegedly false statements that government prosecutors said Mosby made in applying for mortgages for the two houses — among them, her failure to disclose a federal tax debt of $69,000 on loan applications.

“The verdict seemed to indicate the jury had some difficulty accepting the government theory of the case,” said Joseph Balter, a former deputy federal public defender in Maryland. Balter served under the current federal defender, James Wyda, who represented Mosby in the perjury and mortgage fraud cases.

Balter and other attorneys said the decision for Mosby to testify in her own defense appears to have been “helpful,” although it’s always difficult to assess the “net effect” any decision made during a trial has on the outcome.

Mosby said in court she opted to take the stand last week after regretting not testifying in the perjury trial. Also testifying in the mortgage fraud case was Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, her husband of nearly 20 years until their divorce in November.

It was riveting at times to see the onetime Democratic power couple that had ascended to two of Baltimore’s three highest elected offices speak about private, financial and marital problems that landed them in their current situation: divorced, she a convicted felon, he admitting to mishandling and lying about their debts.

Their testimony offered jurors a human narrative that, as one of her lawyers said, reflected the messy complexity of life. It unfolded in stark contrast to a government case that often turned on documents and whether a box on a form was checked.

“It was a paper case. ‘That’s your signature?’” as Warren Brown, a criminal defense attorney, characterized it.

“Getting on the witness stand, maybe she connected with jurors on an emotional basis,” Brown said.

Doug Colbert, a University of Maryland Law School professor who attended some of the trial at the U.S. District Courthouse in Greenbelt, said he thinks Mosby needed to tell jurors her story and came “very close” to persuading them to find her not guilty on both counts.

“I think it was a must-testify moment,” Colbert said. “She had all of the information that no one else could have provided.”

Gerard Martin, a criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said Mosby might have saved at least half her case.

“If she hadn’t testified, she might have been convicted on both counts,” Martin said.

Additionally, Nick Mosby “went in and took the bullet for her,” Martin said of the council president’s testimony.

Martin is among those who question why Marilyn Mosby was indicted in the first place.

“If she was just Mary Smith living in West Baltimore, would she have been prosecuted for this?” Martin said. “No.”

That is not to say that, now convicted, she shouldn’t pay the price, he said.

“She was state’s attorney,” Martin said. “She violated the trust.”

Brown had supported Democrat Gregg Bernstein, the incumbent state’s attorney whom Mosby beat in an upset in 2014, winning the first of her two four-year terms. And Brown doesn’t think she ran the office particularly well. But he said he is sympathetic to her plight, and believes she was under great scrutiny for controversial moves, such as charging the police officers in the Freddie Gray case and deciding not to prosecute minor crimes like low-level drug possession and prostitution.

“They’ll be watching you and given the opportunity, they’ll come after you,” he said.

Brown said the convictions didn’t surprise him because the feds tend to get their man, or in this case, their woman.

“They don’t bring a case unless they’ve got it locked down,” he said. “It was a foregone conclusion once she was indicted.”

Several attorneys said Mosby was ill-served by an earlier team of lawyers, who in January 2023 were allowed to withdraw from the case because lead attorney A. Scott Bolden was under threat of contempt charges. While a judge ultimately decided Bolden shouldn’t face such charges, he had been outspoken — and sometimes profane — in his defense of Mosby and denounced her prosecution as racist and political.

That “sideshow” may have contributed to something Silverman said he found “head-scratching”: After the first case in November resulted in a conviction, he expected prosecutors would resolve the second one without another trial.

“Maybe they felt they were attacked for racial bias,” he said of federal attorneys. “Maybe pressure was put on them to prove both cases were legitimate.”

With multiple convictions, Mosby likely will serve some time, although nowhere near the 30-year maximum sentence she could face, lawyers agreed.

While there could be some comfort for the defense that the jury found Mosby did not make six of the seven false statements alleged by prosecutors, that may not make much of a practical difference, they said.

“One conviction is as good as 10,” Martin said.

Brown agreed, saying that’s all federal prosecutors needed.

“They’re more than fine,” he said. “There’s no egg on their face.”

---------