BALTIMORE — Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby asked a federal judge on Friday to postpone her trial until September in an apparent about face from her original demand for a speedy trial earlier this year.
Charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements on mortgage applications, Mosby’s lawyers are now seeking to delay the trial until after the July primary elections for Baltimore state’s attorney. A two-term Democrat, Mosby has not filed for reelection, but has previously said she would. She has until April 15 to file.
The trial is currently set to begin May 2, and U.S. District Court Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby issued a new order Wednesday confirming the trial date with both Mosby’s lawyers and federal prosecutors. Should the trial be postponed, Griggsby suggested September as the first available date based on her schedule, the motion said.
Federal prosecutors, in a response filed Friday, said Mosby’s lawyers have no good reason to postpone the trial and all the reasons they say it should be postponed are “entirely of their own making.”
“The only basis for a continuance offered by the defense is that they are unprepared and cannot meet the deadline for making expert disclosures on April 4, 2022,” prosecutors wrote.
Mosby’s lawyer A. Scott Bolden did not return a request for comment Friday. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office said it would not comment on a pending trial.
Bolden wrote in his motion that Griggsby had concerns about the schedule, mainly because the defense would not be able to meet certain filing deadlines the judge imposed. Bolden wrote that the defense wants the delay because the government still was turning over evidence and that he is unclear about whether the feds will call expert witnesses, which would determine who the defense’s expert witnesses are.
In a Feb. 23 conference with Griggsby, Bolden told the court he planned to call anywhere between 5 to 10 expert witnesses. Wise told the court that the prosecution would not call any expert witnesses.
Mosby’s five lawyers have until Monday to disclose their expert witnesses in this case, something they told Griggsby they could do in the most recent scheduling conference, according to the prosecution’s response.
Bolden also had concerns about prosecutors not turning over what is known as Brady evidence — the evidence prosecutors have that may help prove his client’s innocence. Normally, prosecutors turn over all the evidence in a case to comply with Brady, but when there are tens of thousands of pages of evidence, they are sometimes compelled to point out what parts may fall under Brady.
Wise said much of the evidence in the case is Mosby’s own financial records, which should already be in her possession. Prosecutors also recently revealed they have recorded phone calls between Mosby and the company that manages Baltimore’s retirement plan.
The government claims Mosby lied in 2020 about experiencing financial hardship during the pandemic so she could withdraw $81,000 without penalty from her City of Baltimore retirement savings account to make down payments on two Florida homes: an eight-bedroom rental near Disney World and a condo on the state’s Gulf Coast.
The motion to postpone the trial comes after both sides have filed pointed critiques of each other, with Bolden attacking Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise’s reputation, claiming political and racial animus is the driving factor behind the prosecution. Wise has repeatedly refuted that claim and told the court Feb. 23 that he plans to file a motion to bar Bolden from continuing to make those attacks, according to court records.
The motion is also a stark departure from Mosby and Bolden’s own calls for a fast trial so as not to hurt her chances for reelection in the upcoming Democratic primary. In predominantly Democratic Baltimore, the primary winner typically wins the general election.
Bolden said himself on Jan. 17, just four days after the original indictment, that he was ready for trial. And Mosby said several times she was innocent and that any delay to the trial would be intended to damage her politically.
“I know I’ve done nothing wrong, so I’m ready to go to trial tomorrow,” Mosby said during a Feb. 1 appearance on MSNBC. “Put this on trial right now so I can prove my innocence. But let’s get to the election because I know that’s what this is all about.”
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(Baltimore Sun reporter Jessica Anderson contributed to this article.)
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