The wife and accomplice of a former Navy employee who attempted to sell nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign nation is stuck with a 22-year prison sentence after a federal appeals court said she is bound by the agreement she made with prosecutors.
Diana Toebbe’s trial court, the U.S. District Court for Northern West Virginia, accepted a plea agreement prior to her January sentencing that included guidelines of between 36 and 108 months behind bars. As part of the agreement, Toebbe waived all rights to appeal her conviction or sentencing.
She eventually was sentenced to 262 months, or nearly 22 years, in prison, a stiff sentence she later argued violated her right to due process. She made a formal appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to that effect, arguing that when sentenced, the district court judge “stepped out of her role as a judge and into the role of an advocate,” before throwing the book at Toebbe, who was handed a longer sentence than her husband, the mastermind of the scheme.
The federal appeals court heard oral arguments from Toebbe’s attorney in September. The court ruled against Toebbe in an order published Oct. 25.
Judge Paul Niemeyer, writing for the three-judge panel who heard Toebbe’s request for an appeal, said that “after carefully reviewing the entire record and considering all the arguments, we conclude that Toebbe has failed to make a sufficient showing to avoid the clear terms of her plea agreement, which she acknowledges she entered into knowingly and intelligently.”
“We also conclude that the government did not breach the plea agreement,” Niemeyer added. “Accordingly, we grant the government’s motion to dismiss.”
Toebbe was convicted of conspiracy to communicate restricted data for being an accomplice to her husband, Jonathan Toebbe, who over several months in 2020 cooked up a scheme to steal Virginia-class submarine secrets to what he thought was a foreign government but which in reality was the FBI.
The extent of Mrs. Toebbe’s involvement in this scheme essentially amounted to acting as a lookout on three “dead drops” of information, according to an appeal of her sentence filed April 19 in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
