Posted on 11/09/23
| News Source: WBAL
After hours of deliberation on Thursday, a jury found Marilyn Mosby guilty in her federal perjury trial.
Jurors returned to federal court in Greenbelt at 8:30 a.m. Thursday after receiving the case late Wednesday afternoon following instructions from the judge and almost three hours of closing arguments. The jury took up two counts of perjury and announced its verdict shortly after 4 p.m.
Prosecutors said evidence presented at trial proves Mosby lied about a COVID-19 financial hardship to illegally withdraw $90,000 from a restricted city retirement account.
The defense said she didn’t lie because her private travel business did take a financial hit after she sunk money into it.
The former Baltimore City state’s attorney was indicted in January 2022 on perjury and mortgage fraud charges, which are going to trial separately.
Opening statements were presented Monday, and the government’s first witnesses testified. The government rested its case Tuesday, and the defense called three witnesses to testify.
During closing arguments Wednesday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky said: “Telling the truth matters. It matters for all of us.” When it came to accessing the restricted retirement account, Zelinsky said, “the defendant believed … telling the truth didn’t matter.”
“The evidence shows that she twice committed perjury in accessing funds that were solely the property of the city of Baltimore for the purpose of her own private gain,” Zelinsky told the jury. “When the world was suffering, Ms. Mosby took advantage … to purchase $1 million worth of Florida vacation homes.”
Zelinsky said Mosby’s travel business “produced no income, it had no customers, no emails, no vendors, no notes, no business plan. Use your common sense. Does that sound like an open and operable business to you? No, it doesn’t … because it wasn’t.”
Mosby’s lead attorney, federal public defender James Wyda, bookended the defense’s closing argument with a theme used throughout trial.
“This case is about a three-page form and what was in Marilyn Mosby’s mind when she filled it out. The government spent time on things that don’t matter,” Wyda said. “Marilyn Mosby established the business, put money into it and was working to make it profitable in 2020. She qualified and she reasonably believed she qualified. She is innocent.”
Wyda said Mosby told the truth when she completed certified paperwork stating that the COVID-19 pandemic harmed her business.
“She lost money and future profits because COVID devastated her business,” Wyda said.
The case may just come down to whether jurors believe, as Wyda put it, whether “Mahogany Elite Enterprises was real.” The defense answers yes and the government says no, while both claim the evidence is on their side.
Mosby’s trial was postponed several times, including in April 2022, September 2022, and this year, after a federal judge allowed all six of Mosby’s defense attorneys to withdraw from the case. A public defender was appointed, and the trial was again moved, this time to October 2023.