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Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s new legal team is making a second push at getting her trial moved out of Baltimore, citing a poll they conducted that showed negative attitudes toward her in the Baltimore region.
A previous request from her initial legal team to move the trial to Greenbelt was denied, with U.S. District Judge Lydia K. Griggsby saying Mosby’s notoriety alone was not enough to move the case.
This time, Mosby’s lawyers with the public defender’s office enlisted Trial Innovations, a “national full-service jury research firm” to conduct research on attitudes toward Mosby. Pollsters conducted phone interviews of 402 jury-eligible residents of the Northern Division and 200 jury-eligible residents of the Southern Division between May 31 and June 15, 2023, the filing says.
The survey found that 67 percent of Northern Division residents polled who had heard of Mosby have negative attitudes toward her, with 36 percent reporting that their opinions are “very negative.” And within the subgroup of people who “had read, seen or heard that Mrs. Mosby’s tenure as state’s attorney was surrounded by controversy” or knew she was under investigation, 65 percent said those controversies and investigations would have an impact on their views of her credibility if they served as jurors.
“When asked to list three adjectives that best describe Mrs. Mosby, 35 percent of Northern Division respondents who had heard of her described her as ‘corrupt,’ 20 percent described her as ‘dishonest’ or a ‘liar,’ and 17 percent described her as a ‘thief,’ ‘greedy,’ or ‘selfish,’” her attorneys wrote.
Familiarity with Mosby and the case were significantly lower in the Southern Division, they said.
More Marilyn Mosby coverage
Prosecutors have previously said the jury pool for a trial in Baltimore’s district easily provides enough people from which to cull an unbiased panel of 12 people, and that the initial jury questionnaires showed that 70% of potential jurors polled had not formed an opinion about the case.
“The prosecution was brought in Baltimore. The court sits in Baltimore. The defendant lives in Baltimore, works in Baltimore, and committed a crime in Baltimore,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Delaney said in January. “It makes perfect sense that the case be brought here, and not moved.”
The jury expert also conducted a study of media coverage, and concluded that “the Northern Division jury pool has been saturated with prejudicial coverage surrounding Marilyn Mosby, her husband, inadmissible investigations, and political controversies” with much of the media coverage, painting her in a negative light and “often portray[ing her] as a controversial and corrupt politician.”
Mosby is charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements. Prosecutors say she lied about a financial hardship in order to access retirement funds under a federal coronavirus relief plan, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, and then lied on paperwork related to the purchase of two Florida properties. The defense has complained of selective prosecution, saying they can’t find an example of anyone else being prosecuted for such a violation, and that Mosby was being targeted because of her race and politics.
“This prosecution is the first of its kind in the nation: neither Mrs. Mosby nor the government has identified a single other case in which prosecutors have charged perjury based on a purported misrepresentation about covid-related ‘adverse financial consequences,’” her attorneys wrote Friday.
In other motions filed Friday, the defense asked that prosecutors be precluded from saying that Mosby bought vacation homes, and want the perjury counts tried separately from the mortgage fraud counts. Attorney Lucius Outlaw, who departed the case earlier this year along with Mosby’s other attorneys, has also rejoined the legal team.
justin.fenton@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Justin Fenton is an investigative reporter for the Baltimore Banner. He previously spent 17 years at the Baltimore Sun, covering the criminal justice system. His book, "We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption," was released by Random House in 2021 and became an HBO miniseries.
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