A West Virginia federal court’s judge has rejected the plea agreements that had called for specific sentencing guidelines in a case involving an alleged plot to sell secret data on American nuclear-powered warships involving a Navy nuclear engineer and his wife.
Following US District Judge Gina Groh’s decision, Maryland-based couple Jonathan and Diana Toebbe withdrew their guilty pleas to one count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data Tuesday after pleading guilty in February in the Martinsburg-based court.
Judge Groh stressed she hasn’t found any justifiable reasons for accepting either one of these plea agreements considering the seriousness of the charges and the fact that sentencing options were strikingly deficient.
She also noted that the motive behind the couple’s act was selfishness and greed that could’ve caused great harm to the Navy and others. Judge Groh set the trial date for Jan. 17.
The lawyers of Jonathan Toebbe, who held a top-secret security clearance through the Defense Department, previously agreed a sentencing range had called for a potential punishment of between 12 and 17 years in prison.
Prosecutors, which sought three years for Diana Toebbe, noted Tuesday that it would’ve been one of the most significant sentences imposed under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 in modern times.
Toebbe is accused of abusing his access to top-secret government information and repeated selling of details about Virginia-class submarines to an undercover FBI agent he believed was a foreign government’s representative.
Court files show his wife Diana Toebbe was acting as a lookout while memory cards with secret information were being left at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations. According to Tuesday’s testimony, none of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential.
Be the first to comment