Diana Tobbe, one of two conspirators charged with trying to sell nuclear-submarine secrets to a foreign government, was being transported to a federal prison this week and has retained a lawyer married to a Navy officer to represent her during an appeal.
Tobbe said the Nov. 9 judgment against her in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, Martinsburg violated her eighth amendment right, her right to due process and made “other sentencing errors,” according to a docketing statement filed Thursday with the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.
According to the eighth amendment of the U.S. constitution, “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Toebbe will be sent to Federal Correctional Institute Aliceville in Aliceville, Ala., according to a judgment order published Wednesday in the trial court docket. Aliceville is a “low security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp,” according to the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons.
The judge in the trial case recommended that Toebee be incarcerated as close to Annapolis, Md., near Toebbe’s former home, as possible. For a single count conspiracy to communicate restricted data, Toebbe, 46, got a 262-month sentence in the District Court and was given credit for time served since Oct. 9, 2021.
That comes out to more than 20 years in prison, accounting for time served. Toebbe also has to pay a $50,000 fine, with $100 due on the fifth of each month, according to the trial court’s judgment order.
Meanwhile, Toebbe’s lawyer on the appeals circuit is Jessica Carmichael, an ex-public defender married to a Navy officer, according Carmichael’s practice’s website.
Toebbe is the wife of Jonathan Toebbe, 44, a former Q-cleared Naval Reactors employee who smuggled technical data about Virginia-class attack submarines out of his workplace for years. Jonathan Toebbe got a 232-month prison sentence, equal to about 19 years and four months. He was also fined more than $45,000 and faces five years of supervised release.
The Toebbes thought they were selling Virginia-class submarine secrets that Jonathan Toebbe stole to agents of a foreign government. Those agents, however, were FBI agents.
