A federal judge on Friday declined to throw out the extortion case against Baltimore attorney Stephen L. Snyder, whose used the catchphrase “Don’t just sue them, Snyder them” throughout his decades-long career handling personal injury cases.
Now a criminal defendant, Snyder said in court that he now understands how other people felt when they faced off against him for all those years.
“All my life I Snydered others successfully,” Snyder told U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman. “I feel like I’m being Snydered, and it’s very painful.”
Boardman patiently heard more than two hours of presentation from Snyder at Friday’s hearing, even when Snyder veered into personal grievances or irrelevant factual issues.
Snyder, who is 77 and experiencing health problems, is representing himself with help from standby counsel, Gerald C. Ruter, who can assist Snyder but not represent him in court. Snyder had said he needs help handling the case.
Prosecutors allege he attempted to extort the University of Maryland Medical System in exchange for a $25 million sham consulting deal in 2018.
On Friday, Snyder argued that prosecutors should never have brought the indictment. He has maintained throughout the case that the $25 million deal he proposed to UMMS was part of settlement negotiations for a medical malpractice case he was handling against the hospital system, not an attempt at extortion.
“I’ve never been accused of dishonesty in my life,” Snyder said.
He has claimed that federal investigators stopped a 2018 meeting between him, an ethics attorney and UMMS officials that would have clarified that the deal was aboveboard. Prosecutors countered that the government is not obligated to help criminal defendants create evidence of their innocence.
Boardman agreed Friday, rejecting Snyder’s argument that his due process rights were violated.
“Here, the evidence that Mr. Snyder says would have exonerated him, and prevented this prosecution, never existed,” Boardman said.
Snyder has been representing himself since December, when a judge found that he was competent to proceed without a lawyer. Snyder’s defense team asked to withdraw from the case last year, after Snyder contacted the judge handling the case directly in a call the judge described as “disorganized and haphazard.”
The indictment charges that Snyder made a series of threats against UMMS if system officials did not agree to a $25 million consulting agreement that would have blocked Snyder from handling future lawsuits against its hospitals and medical providers.
He presented the deal as part of a settlement with a woman whose husband allegedly died after a botched transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Prosecutors say Snyder did not intend to do any work for the money; when asked what he could do for the $25 million, Snyder allegedly told UMMS representatives that he didn’t care and could be “a janitor.”
According to the indictment, Snyder threatened UMMS with a negative campaign if the consulting deal wasn’t inked that would include press coverage, advertisements on the internet, including one that would run every time someone visited the UMMS transplant site, and two other videos that he would air.
Snyder asked UMMS officials to meet with Baltimore ethics lawyer Andrew Graham to assure them the deal was legitimate.
The hospital system’s representatives never agreed to the deal, however, and were by that point working with law enforcement. Some of Snyder’s meetings and phone calls with UMMS staff were secretly recorded as part of the investigation.
In recorded phone calls played in court Friday, Snyder could be heard saying he did not want the deal to be perceived as extortion.
“I’ve been a lawyer since 1970 and I wouldn’t want to do anything that jeopardizes my career at this stage in my life,” Snyder said in one of the calls.
The meeting between Snyder, Graham and UMMS never happened after UMMS canceled it, allegedly at the request of prosecutors. Snyder claims the move blocked him from showing that the deal was legal.
Boardman noted, however, that Snyder’s argument centers on a factual dispute that a jury will need to consider. The judge said she did not have the authority to throw out the indictment based on Snyder’s arguments, which sometimes rambled and failed to point to relevant legal precedent.
Snyder said he is not discouraged by the ruling.
“My case requires a factual determination on many issues through examination of documents and the calling of witnesses,” he said. “Unfortunately, a motion to dismiss is based on legal principles and statutes. I think the judge was very receptive to listening to me, but it wasn’t the right forum.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office brought the indictment against Snyder in October 2020. The case has crawled along since then, slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and an appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal appeals court ruled against Snyder in November and ordered a pair of law firms that worked with him on the UMMS deal to turn over records in response to a grand jury subpoena.
Snyder agreed to the suspension of his law license when he was indicted, but regained his ability to practice law last year, when the Maryland Supreme Court agreed there was no basis to continue the suspension because Snyder has not been convicted of a crime.
Snyder’s criminal case is set for trial in November. On Friday, Snyder requested a bench trial, which would be heard by Boardman instead of jurors, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew P. Phelps said the prosecution still wants a jury trial.