The wife of a former Navy civil engineer who attempted to sell nuclear-submarine secrets to a foreign nation is contesting the 22-year sentence she got for her part in the attempted espionage. 

Diana 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.

By all accounts, 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. A response to Toebbe’s appeal is due June 14.

In the second of her two guilty pleas, Toebbe agreed not to appeal her conviction because she traded her right to appeal for a lighter sentence. The U.S. attorney trying the case, Toebbe and her lawyers jointly agreed to a recommended sentence of 36 months, or three years following her conviction in November 2022. 

“She walked out of court having been sentenced to almost 22 years in prison,” more time than the 19 years given to her husband and 13 years above the low-end of sentencing guidelines laid out in her plea agreement, Toebbe’s lawyers wrote in the appeals brief.

“While Mrs. Toebbe signed a plea agreement waiving her right to appeal, she did not, and cannot, knowingly and voluntarily waive her right to a fair and adequate sentencing process,” Toebbe’s camp said.  

The district court rejected the first plea agreement, in which the parties agreed that a sentence of not more than thirty-six months imprisonment was appropriate for her part in the plot. The court accepted a second plea agreement that included sentencing guidelines of between 36 and 108 months behind bars. 

Diana Toebbe’s appeal to the Fourth District Court of West Virginia attempts to paint a picture of her circumstances around the time her husband approached her with the idea of stealing classified information from his office and selling it to a foreign entity. 

Mrs. Toebbe was “a high school humanities teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, living a quiet suburban life with her husband … and their two school-aged children,” her appeal said. 

“Mrs. Toebbe expressed initial skepticism, but did not dissuade him,” the court documents said. “Eventually, she became an accomplice.”

She also suffered from “severe, well-documented, longstanding depression which was exacerbated by external pressure she faced around the time of her offense,” her appeal said.