Former Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh walked out of a federal courtroom yesterday with a three-year sentence -- after more than seven years of defrauding entities with business before the city and the state while she was a Senator and the Mayor, and evading the taxes she owed from the profits of that fraud. She was also ordered to pay nearly $700,000 in restitution and forfeitures.

US District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow announced the sentence to a hushed courtroom in downtown Baltimore after hearing from prosecutors, who argued Pugh should serve nearly five years, and Pugh’s attorneys, who suggested that a sentence of a year and a day was appropriate. The court allowed Pugh a little time to put her affairs in order, before she reports to federal prison.

For a legal analysis of the Pugh sentencing, Tom is joined in the studio by Baltimore attorney Steven Levin, a partner at the firm of Rosenberg Martin Greenberg and a former federal prosecutor with the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland; and Ronald Weich. He’s the Dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law. Mr. Weich also had an extensive career in government, serving as an assistant US Attorney General during the Obama administration and as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page. You can watch the video here, from the beginning to 19:55 of the feed.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.