Prosecutors ask five-year prison term for Oaks

Former state senator’s advocates cite his age, service, poor health

Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to sentence former state Sen. Nathaniel T. Oaks to five years in prison for taking money from an undercover FBI informant and agreeing to help him defraud a federal housing agency.

Prosecutors requested five years of imprisonment and three years of supervised release. That’s less than the eight to 10 years sentencing guidelines recommend.

Oaks’ lawyers had asked for an 18-month prison sentence and submitted letters to the court from supporters, including five former state legislators. Oaks’ public defenders said Oaks, 71, diligently served his constituents for decades and is now in poor health.

Oaks is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday after resigning from the Maryland General Assembly in March and pleading guilty to two felony fraud charges. The Democrat admitted to taking $15,300 from the FBI informant, who posed as an out-of-town developer and enlisted him in a scheme to defraud the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum this week that Oaks’ recorded conversations with the informant “reveal Oaks’ true character, which is that of a profoundly corrupt politician.”

Assistant U.S. attorneys Kathleen O. Gavin and Leo J. Wise also asked Judge Richard D. Bennett to fine Oaks up to $300,000, and to consider requiring that he reimburse the public defender’s office for the cost of representing him.

In a filing from Oaks’ lawyers earlier this week, former state legislators Clarence Davis, Salima Siler Marriott, Gareth E. Murray, John A. Pica Jr. and Larry Young each wrote a letter asking the judge for leniency when sentencing Oaks.

Leonard Hamm, a former Baltimore police commissioner who now heads Coppin State University’s police department, wrote that Oaks “is in his seventies, has a tainted legacy, and is a broken man.” Hamm said he could see no benefit to putting Oaks in prison.

Marvin L. “Doc” Cheatham, a former president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, asked the judge for leniency, pointing to Oaks’ decades of service to Baltimore. Oaks had represented the city for just over a year as a senator and for 28 years as a delegate.

Prosecutors said that while the letters in support of Oaks are likely sincere, most corrupt politicians would be able to “assemble an array of friends and political allies to tell the sentencing judge that they were really good people.” Nathaniel Oaks