Bromwells can report to prison six months apart, judge rules

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Surrounded by friends and family, Thomas Bromwell, center, leaves the Federal Court Building in Baltimore without comment after sentencing Friday, Nov. 16.

A federal judge has agreed to partially stagger the prison terms of former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. and his wife, Mary Patricia.

Mary Pat Bromwell, who pled guilty in July to one count of mail fraud for her role in the elaborate racketeering conspiracy, will begin her year-and-a-day term on Jan. 7, as previously ordered.

But Thomas Bromwell’s report date, which had been the same as his wife’s, has been postponed until July 1. Bromwell was sentenced on Nov. 16 to seven years incarceration for accepting bribes from a construction executive in exchange for his influence as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz’s order does not make the couple’s sentences consecutive, as they had requested in court at sentencing. However, the arrangement represents a compromise that will minimize the time the Bromwells’ two minor children, ages 11 and 14, will be without either parent.

“I think what the Bromwells were asking for was very reasonable, was supported by the probation office, was supported by other cases, and I think the judge did the right thing,” said Barry J. Pollack, Thomas Bromwell’s attorney.

At sentencing, Motz declined to stagger the Bromwells’ sentences. However, he relented after meeting with attorneys over the past week. The defense lawyers cited precedent for their request, and the government raised no objections to it.

“We were able to provide to the judge a couple of examples of other cases in federal court in Baltimore where other judges of this court had granted similar requests under similar circumstances for similar periods of time,” Pollack said. “So what we were requesting was not unusual or unprecedented.”

The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen O. Gavin, also rejected the notion that the Bromwells were given preferential treatment.

“It happens,” Gavin acknowledged after the Nov. 16 sentencing, although she said this was a first in her own experience.

Herbert Better, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore not involved in the Bromwell case, said it was the circumstances of the case that were unusual, not the relief Motz granted.

“Just from my recollection of 14 years as a prosecutor and the last 20 years on the other side, I’m pretty confident that there was a case or cases where sentences were staggered to accommodate a unique or special issue – like here, where you would eliminate both parents of young children,” Better said.

William B. Purpura, who represented Mary Bromwell, said Motz’s decision allows the Bromwell children to finish the academic year without interruption.

“The bottom line is for continuity for the children to compete school,” Purpura said. He said the transition time will allow Bromwell to find housing for his family, since the forfeiture of the couple’s Parkville home is imminent.

Although Bromwell will not have to report to prison until July, he must participate in an alcohol counseling treatment program in the interim, Motz ordered.

Since Mary Bromwell’s sentence is more than a year in duration, she will be eligible for a good behavior credit of up to 15 percent of her prison term or 54 days, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office.

She may also be released from prison to a halfway house up to two months before that, Pollack said. Purpura said he hoped to have her in a halfway house by September.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not decided where the Bromwells will serve their sentences. The defense has requested they be imprisoned as close to Baltimore as possible, Purpura said.