Stephen Snyder found guilty of attempted extortion

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Stephen Snyder, one of Maryland’s most prominent attorneys, was found guilty of attempted extortion and related charges in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Friday.

After deliberating for about three hours, a jury found Snyder — who was held in contempt of court and incarcerated overnight after closing arguments Thursday — guilty of one count of Hobbs Act attempted extortion and seven related Travel Act offenses.

“I’m disappointed. That’s all I’m gonna say,” Snyder said after the verdict was pronounced.

Snyder did not say whether he intends to appeal. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 25.

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

The verdict was a dramatic fall for Snyder, who each year represented just a handful of clients with catastrophic, multi-million dollar medical malpractice claims, and became locally famous with ads bearing his slogan: “Don’t just sue them — Snyder them.”

The case was about a $25 million consulting agreement Snyder sought with the University of Maryland Medical System in 2018 while he represented Michele Sanders, the wife of a man who died 13 months after a kidney transplant at the system’s flagship hospital in Baltimore.

Prosecutors say the agreement was a “sham” and a “shake-down,” and that Snyder crossed a line. UMMS officials said they felt threatened and that no plaintiff’s lawyer had ever made such a demand. They settled Sanders’s case for $5 million and did not agree to the consultancy.

Testimony and evidence showed that Snyder threatened to go on a media blitz alleging the UMMS transplant program prioritized profit over safety and gave high-risk kidneys to people who didn’t need them. On multiple occasions, he referred to the dirt he collected as a “gold mine.”

The agreement would have conflicted him out of future claims against the UMMS transplant program, and in meetings with UMMS officials, he expressed no interest in working for the money.

“The only thing that was clear at the time was that he would not publish those commercials,” a UMMS risk-management lawyer, Alicia Reynolds, testified. “That was the only thing we understood we would be buying for that fee.”

“I don’t care if I don’t do anything,” Snyder said in a video of the June 2018 meeting.

Snyder maintains that he was entrapped and that he was simply being a tough lawyer when he showed hospital officials a video they considered false and inflammatory, which included footage of Michele Sanders’ husband, Jeffrey Sanders, in his hospital bed in the last weeks of his life.

“The University of Maryland had the motive and intent to get rid of its most worthy adversary,” he said in his closing argument on Thursday. “If University of Maryland doesn’t want to do the deal, that’s the end of it.”

He said he wanted the transplant program to be sanctioned, and that he wanted to “scare the hell out of them,” but did not want to destroy the program.

Snyder hired Andy Graham, co-founder of the firm Kramon & Graham, to help him negotiate the agreement. Graham testified that he provided standard agreement drafts but knew few details. Snyder said he wanted Graham to be present at negotiations with UMMS — which he argued was proof he had no criminal intent — but the meeting was canceled.

Multiple medical experts were called by both sides.

Snyder attempted to portray the transplant program as systemically negligent while prosecutors and current and former UMMS doctors said they used high-risk organs at higher rates than other hospitals in order to increase access and prevent people from dying on waitlists.

He called two doctors whom he had hired to provide expert opinions on malpractice claims. While they described substandard care by UMMS, those cases had already been litigated and settled, and the experts did not opine on the quality of the transplant program as a whole.

Snyder also called Michele Sanders as a witness. Sanders testified that she wanted Snyder to enter into a consulting agreement with the hospital in order to prevent similar tragedies, but she also seemed to misunderstand what that consultancy would mean, saying she would never forgive Snyder if he went to “their side” and was unable to represent people with claims against UMMS.

Snyder took a major risk in choosing to represent himself. That strategy did not pay off as Judge Deborah Boardman reprimanded him nearly constantly throughout the trial for refusing to follow the rules of evidence, inserting testimony into his questions of witnesses and failing to stay on topic. He frequently interrupted Boardman and spoke rudely to her.

Boardman ultimately held him in contempt of court on Thursday for his violation of repeated court orders. As two U.S. Marshals escorted Snyder out of the courtroom, he joked to the audience that he was going on a “vacation.”

Witnesses testified that they felt scared of Snyder.

For example, in March 2018, Snyder went to dinner at the Capital Grille, an upscale steakhouse in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, with UMMS executive Stephen Bartlett, who had previously headed the transplant program, along with Bartlett’s wife and Snyder’s girlfriend.

Snyder repeatedly said to Bartlett’s wife, “as long as he does what I want him to do, everything will be OK.”

Bartlett said Snyder was “red-faced” and “his eyes were bloodshot.”

“I was sick inside,” he continued. “I felt as if I’d just had dinner with a very bad person.”

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

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

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

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

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

Trial begins in lawyer Stephen Snyder’s attempted extortion case