Day 5 of trial: Prosecution rests, Snyder tells witness to ‘go back to Fenwick’

Listen to this article

Federal prosecutors rested their case against medical malpractice lawyer Stephen Snyder on the fifth day of his trial for attempted extortion and related charges.

UPDATE: Stephen Snyder found guilty of attempted extortion

Snyder immediately sought an acquittal, but did not offer any legal justification, and U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Boardman denied his motion.

Snyder on Tuesday repeatedly failed to follow the rules of evidence, attempted to insert testimony into his questions, and interrupted the witness, prompting Boardman to sustain almost all of the prosecutors’ objections.

The last witness called by prosecutors was Natalie Magdeburger, who served as outside counsel to the University of Maryland Medical System. She testified that the consulting agreement Snyder demanded was a “sham,” and that Snyder was attempting to “check a box so he could comply with an ethical rule.”

RELATED: Snyder held in contempt, minutes after closing arguments at federal trial

Magdeburger, now retired, is the mayor of Fenwick Island, Delaware.

Boardman ended Magdeburger’s testimony after Snyder asked a series of irrelevant questions, including about the framed clips of media stories featured in his office, which she had seen when she visited the office for a meeting.

“Would you agree I was on the cover of Baltimore magazine?” he asked. “Were you aware I was my son’s graduation speaker? Were you aware I had four sons who were lawyers?”

Boardman turned on the white-noise machine to hold a brief private conference with Snyder’s team and the prosecutors, then dismissed Magdeburger.

“Go back to Fenwick,” Snyder told her as she left.

Snyder’s first witness was Jonathan Schraud, a retired attorney now living in Florida, who practiced for decades in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Much of his experience was in defense of health care professionals in malpractice claims.

Schraud offered expertise on consulting agreements, saying Snyder’s $25 million “request” was reasonable given the high dollar value of two settlements — $13.5 million in total — Snyder had recently negotiated with UMMS. He said it would make sense for UMMS to retain Snyder as a consultant in order to have him as an “ally” and to prevent him from bringing more cases against UMMS in the future.

(Magdeburger and other UMMS officials said their understanding was that Snyder would be conflicted out of cases against the transplant program, not the entire hospital system.)

“My opinion is that the request reflected fair value,” Schraud said.

Schraud also offered his opinion on the state of the transplant program, despite his lack of medical expertise. Boardman sustained most of prosecutor Matt Phelps’s objections to his testimony for lack of direct knowledge.

“This is not an expert in medical malpractice,” Boardman told Snyder during a break at which she implored him to ask questions relevant to Schraud’s legal expertise.

On Wednesday, Snyder is expected to call his former client Michelle Sanders, the wife of Jeffrey Sanders, a patient who died shortly after a kidney transplant at UMMS. Snyder negotiated a $5 million settlement on behalf of Sanders, who he says wanted him to work as a consultant to reform the department.

Day 6: Former client didn’t want Snyder to flip to ‘their side’ under consultancy

Day 4 of trial: Snyder struggles to follow rules during cross-examination

Day 3 of Snyder trial: ‘I felt very threatened by Mr. Snyder’

Day 2 of Snyder trial: ‘I don’t want to do it, so don’t make me do it’

Trial begins in lawyer Stephen Snyder’s attempted extortion case