Civil rights organizations claim former Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby was targeted by federal agencies before being charged with fraud and they want the government to pardon her.
As her sentencing hearing approaches on May 23, the NAACP and other organizations, including the National Council of Negro Women and the National Urban League, sent a letter to President Joe Biden in support of Mosby to request her pardon. The five-page letter highlights beliefs that the former prosecutor was unfairly targeted and unjustly convicted for perjury and mortgage fraud as a payback scheme for the role she played in prosecuting officers following the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. “The only thing Marilyn Mosby is guilty of is the desire to provide her family with a better life,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said.
“The sad reality is, as Black women take their rightful places in positions of power, dark forces seek to tear down both their progress and that of our community.”
The juries of two trials found Mosby guilty of lies surrounding a vacation home mortgage and withdrawals from her retirement account related to hardships due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She faces up to 40 years in federal prison, and she told Joy-Ann Reid, host of MSNBC’s The Reid Out, that she has lost everything. “They’ve targeted me. A four-year-long investigation where they’ve combed every aspect of my life,” Mosby said.
“They issued subpoenas to all of the black churches five months before my reelection not only to get me out of office but they’ve done this to demonize me and to vilify me and to break me – break me psychologically, break me professionally, break me spiritually, break me financially. I’ve lost everything.”
The letter calls out the Department of Justice, under former President Donald Trump’s administration, of pushing a “meritless indictment” against the former prosecutor and accuses the Biden Administration of ignoring political motives behind what is described as a “malicious
prosecution.” “We expect that political persecutions and malicious prosecutions pursued during the Trump Administration would not continue in the Biden Administration,” the letter read.While NAACP’s Senior Vice President of Global Policy and Impact, Patrice Willoughby, hopes for a quick response from Biden, there may be a waiting period. When asked about the letter, according to CBS News, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre alluded to the fact that she can’t comment on the president’s thoughts since she has yet to speak to him about it.
“I want to
be really mindful here because that is obviously a Department of Justice process and I don’t want to be certainly be speaking to any individual pardon request, that is not something I can do,” Jean-Pierre said.“The Department of Justice employs a process that is thorough and deliberative when it comes to a process to review executive clemency petitions.”
Civil rights organizations are seeking Mosby’s pardon before May 23 and to “restore her full rights.” A website on her behalf has been created, and a petition has secured more than 16,000 signatures.