Marilyn Mosby is many things to many people. Baltimore’s state’s attorney has been a rising political star. She is smart, energetic, progressive, reform-minded and the source of some pride within the city’s Black community. And she is innocent until proven guilty. Yet last week’s four-count federal indictment of the 41-year-old mother of two, who has served as Baltimore’s top prosecutor for seven years, was a body blow. Not only because the city has seen more than its share of public corruption allegations (and convictions) over the last two decades, but also because Baltimore remains besieged by gun violence, and the state’s attorney is in a key position in that fight. No matter what one may think of Mosby’s job performance to date, it is difficult to see the outlook for reducing the homicide count somehow improved by this circumstance.
Let’s be frank: Long before federal prosecutors set their sights on Mosby’s financial dealings, she was a political lightning rod. Many in the city, including members of this board, are enthusiastic about the way her understanding of how historic racism and mass incarceration has crippled the community shapes her office’s policies. Yet others in Maryland, with more politically conservative views, see her decision to not seek convictions for low-level offenses, such as drug possession, as unacceptably soft on crime. That has set off fireworks between her and Gov. Larry Hogan, who has accused her of being the cause of the city’s crime problems while she, in turn, labeled such attacks from a white Republican as racist dog-whistling. Both found opportunities to engage their political base, but, once again, the exchange only hurt the criminal justice cause.
And then there’s the indictment. The allegations against her are far from trivial, stemming as they do from false statements made on financial forms related to mortgage applications in Florida and a hardship withdrawal from her retirements savings that’s also related to those property purchases. But they are not exactly the crimes of the century, either. Some of her supporters have disparaged the charges as mistakes of paperwork; they are more than that. A qualified attorney surely understands the risk of misrepresentation on a federal form, including the claim of a pandemic-related hardship as allowed under the CARES Act. Yet perhaps there are mitigating circumstances — as her attorney now alleges, but offers no specifics — that might somehow justify the claim for someone who earns a quarter-million dollars per year. We do not know. Mosby has yet to offer an explanation, which is also her right.
