Marilyn Mosby to start home detention in a week
BALTIMORE — Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby will begin her year of home detention June 20, according to court filings in her federal criminal case.
The year of electronic monitoring is the first phase of Mosby’s sentence for perjury and mortgage fraud. U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby also gave Mosby three years of probation at her sentencing last month, rejecting a request from prosecutors and federal sentencing guidelines that called for prison time.
Before beginning home detention, Mosby received permission from the court to travel to Boston because of the June 2 death of her grandmother. Mosby is permitted to stay in Boston through June 18, according to an order from Griggsby.
Prosecutors did not object to the request.
After her return, Mosby will be placed on electronic monitoring and will be restricted to her residence at all times except for work, education, religious services, medical treatment, child care or other activities approved by her probation officer. She will be allowed to use communal spaces at her apartment complex, Griggsby clarified after a request from Mosby’s defense team.
In November, a federal jury found that Mosby lied about suffering an adverse financial consequence because of the coronavirus pandemic, which she claimed in order to withdraw about $80,000 early from her city retirement account under a federal COVID-19 economic relief law.
The indictment also charged that Mosby lied when she used the money to put down payments on a pair of vacation properties in Florida worth almost $1 million combined: an eight-bedroom house near Disney World and a condo on the Gulf Coast. Mosby faced one count of mortgage fraud per property.
A jury in February acquitted Mosby on one count of mortgage fraud, clearing her of most of the alleged false statements, but convicted her on the other count. Jurors found Mosby lied about a “gift letter” she composed saying that her then-husband Nick Mosby gave her enough money to close on the condo.
Mosby is appealing her convictions and has asked the judge to pause the government’s seizure of her condo. (She previously sold the house near Disney.)
Griggsby ruled at Mosby’s sentencing that the government can take the condo, which prosecutors argued was the proceeds of crime.
Griggsby ordered the government to return Mosby’s down payment on the property, which amounted to about 10% of the cost, plus 10% of the condo’s appreciated value since she bought it. According to estimates from defense attorneys, the property nearly doubled in value to almost $890,000.
In a motion to stay the forfeiture filed Monday, Mosby’s lawyers argued that she is likely to win before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawyers will argue on appeal that prosecutors failed to prove venue, or that Mosby signed or sent the gift letter from the District of Maryland. The unusual argument did not succeed when the defense raised it earlier in the case.
Mosby’s team also will argue on appeal that the jury at her second trial was improperly allowed to consider the perjury convictions from the first trial as evidence against Mosby, according to the motion.
The 4th Circuit also will be asked to weigh whether the seizure of the Gulf Coast condo is an “unconstitutional excessive fine” or whether prosecutors provided enough evidence that Mosby could not have purchased the property without the false gift letter, the lawyers wrote.
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