GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge adjourned Marilyn Mosby’s mortgage fraud trial early Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the former Baltimore state’s attorney’s lawyers began presenting evidence in her defense.
U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby ordered jurors to report back to court the next day, saying the trial would resume on time Thursday morning.
Griggsby gave no public explanation for adjourning early, but her decision followed a private discussion with attorneys in the case and what one of Mosby’s lawyers described as a “meeting” the judge had outside the lawyers’ presence during the lunch break.
The unusual adjournment also came after Mosby’s attorneys presented an unusual legal argument when the government closed its case. It’s routine for defense lawyers to make a motion for judgment of acquittal, asking a judge to dismiss the charges against their client, once the prosecution is done presenting evidence.
Mosby’s lawyers said prosecutors failed to prove the crimes they charged Mosby with happened in Maryland. Citing a provision of the U.S. Constitution that says a defendant has a right to be tried in the state where their crimes are alleged to have occurred, they asked Griggsby to throw out Mosby’s charges. They filed legal arguments in writing.
Attorney Andrew I. Alperstein, who isn’t involved in Mosby’s case, said the fact that Mosby’s attorneys filed their argument in writing at this stage of the trial shows they “planned” to raise a legal question he dubbed “not the routine.”
In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky called Mosby’s motion “meritless and groundless” but asked for time to allow the prosecution to respond in writing.
Griggsby is giving prosecutors until the end of the day Friday to submit their response and the defense until the same time Monday to reply to the government’s legal brief. In the meantime, the judge ordered the trial to continue.
Alperstein said Griggsby likely wants to keep the trial moving to make use of the time jurors sacrificed to attend to their civic duty. When the judge considers the legal question, Alperstein said, she won’t take into account evidence brought up after Mosby’s lawyers raised it.
Mosby, 44, faces two counts of mortgage fraud, with the government accusing her of making several false statements on loan applications for two properties in Florida: an eight-bedroom rental near Disney World and a condo on the Gulf Coast.
In sum, prosecutors say Mosby lied seven times between the two loan applications. However, they only have to convince the jury of just one false statement per mortgage. To convict, the jurors must believe Mosby knowingly lied and that her false statements were intended to mislead the financial institutions that issued her loans.
Over about two days, prosecutors presented six witnesses, including an officer with the IRS, an FBI forensic accountant, three mortgage underwriters and a man who ran a vacation rental company. Each witness’s testimony provided context to the reams of financial and real estate records prosecutors introduced as evidence in the case.
The underwriters testified that they relied on Mosby’s truthfulness in the mortgage applications in deciding to issue her loans for the properties, which together were worth almost $1 million.
At the center of Mosby’s alleged lies is an approximately $69,000 federal tax debt Mosby and her ex-husband, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, racked up. She did not disclose the debt on either mortgage application.
Andrew Metter, an underwriter for United Wholesale Mortgage, which approved Mosby’s mortgage loan for the condo in Longboat Key, testified that lenders need to know an applicant’s liabilities to calculate whether they can afford a mortgage.
“We are evaluating risk,” Metter said in court. “If there’s debt, we want to know about it. We take this into consideration when approving or denying a mortgage loan.”
Mosby’s lawyers seem poised to put the blame on Mosby’s former spouse. In pretrial court papers, defense attorneys said Nick Mosby was responsible for the couple’s taxes and that he may not have communicated with his then-wife about their debt.
Nick Mosby was at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, where the trial is being held at Mosby’s request, shortly before the case adjourned Wednesday. Defense attorneys have signaled their intent to call him as a witness in Mosby’s defense.
On his way out of court, Nick Mosby said he was there to support his family.
Marilyn Mosby and her attorneys declined to comment outside court, not addressing the day’s events or willing to describe the judge’s meeting at lunch.
In court, Federal Public Defender James Wyda said the defense was prepared to proceed with its case before Griggsby adjourned but also didn’t want to disrupt the order of its witnesses.
“We are going to try to get guidance regarding the outstanding issues, so we can be ready to proceed tomorrow,” Wyda told Griggsby.
Earlier in the trial, an IRS officer testified that the agency sent the couple notice on 40 occasions of their tax debt and, later, the lien placed against their assets. The officer, Matthew Lopes, said the IRS used certified mail, which requires a signature from the recipient.
The first witness who testified in Mosby’s defense was a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service who was assigned the route including the home the couple lived in in Reservoir Hill.
Kelli Mabrey said she rarely remembered seeing Marilyn Mosby home and handing her mail. Sometimes, Mabrey said, she saw Nick Mosby or the couple’s daughters, and recalled having given them mail by hand. She said she often dropped letters through a front-door mail slot at the brick town house and recalled sometimes seeing mail on the floor.
“If I was walking down her street, I might see her running in, I might see her running out,” Mabrey said of Mosby.
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(Baltimore Sun reporter Jean Marbella contributed to this article.)
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