BALTIMORE — Federal prosecutors accuse Marilyn Mosby’s legal team of attempting to taint the jury pool through regular comments to the media on the courthouse steps, according to a motion filed Tuesday.
The prosecutors argued that since January, when Mosby was federally indicted, her team has made regular statements that are prohibited by local court rules, and they have asked the court to order Mosby’s defense team not to give future press conferences outside the federal courthouse.
“Defense counsel has repeatedly and flagrantly violated this Court’s Local Rules governing attorney conduct since the day the Grand Jury returned an indictment in this matter,” they wrote. “In order to protect due process and the dignity of the Court, this Court should order all counsel to cease giving press conferences on the courthouse steps.”
In Tuesday’s motion, assistant U.S. attorneys Leo J. Wise, Sean R. Delaney and Aaron S.J. Zelinsky wrote that one of Mosby’s attorneys, A. Scott Bolden, has repeatedly made such statements to the press outside the courthouse and on local and national broadcasts, which “show a consistent pattern: defense counsel has violated the Local Rules in an attempt to bias the jury pool, and has used the courthouse steps to do so.”
Mosby, who unsuccessfully ran for a third term as the city’s top prosecutor, is charged with two counts each of perjury and making false statements on loan applications.
The perjury charges are based on Mosby’s use of federal coronavirus relief law to withdraw about $81,000 without penalty from her city retirement account on two separate occasions in 2020. She used the money to purchase two Florida properties: An eight-bedroom home near Disney World and a condo on the state’s Gulf Coast.
Mosby is accused of misleading the mortgage lenders by signing a document promising the house would serve as a second home — and thus be able to lock in a lower interest rate — when she’d already signed a contract with a company to operate the home as a rental, according to the indictment filed against her. Mosby also neglected to disclose on the loan applications a federal tax lien placed against her for unpaid income taxes, the indictment said.
After Mosby’s latest court appearance, Bolden expressed frustrations to the media about the trial being postponed, cursing during his remarks, and later apologizing to the court for his public comments.
“The next day, in the same spot, he told the press that he regretted nothing that he said the day before,” prosecutors said.
Rule 204 states that attorneys can he held in contempt of court for making certain statements related to an ongoing case, including information about witnesses, the possibility of a guilty plea, or opinions as to the merits of the case.
Last week, Bolden wrote in a separate filing that he should not be held in contempt of court for violating the rule. He argued that the case has garnered extensive publicity, which he said already has tainted the jury pool.
In the filing, Bolden said he used responses from jury questionnaires to “illustrate the existence of pre-existing bias against State’s Attorney Mosby in the potential jury pool in Baltimore, given the pervasive negative news coverage about these proceedings.”
Mosby’s lawyers said in a previous filing that about 30% of prospective jurors already have made up their minds about her case. The defense filing was in response to prosecutors’ request for an order in the case prohibiting those involved from commenting about the case.
Bolden wrote in a filing Friday that “the risk of an unfair trial existed long before counsel provided the statements from the juror questionnaires.”
The rule also prohibits lawyers in a case from making statements about the “accused’s guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case,” according to the prosecutors’ motion. They included several quotes that Bolden has made over the course of the case, including when Bolden called the charges in the case “bogus” and “rooted in personal, political, and racial animus.”
Her trial is scheduled for March.
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