US District Judge Angel Kelley rejected a request last week by Cannon-Grant’s lawyers to let her appear remotely for the change of plea hearing, ruling she must be physically present in the courtroom.
In a motion filed Thursday, Cannon-Grant’s lawyers asked to submit a sealed filing detailing their reasons for seeking a virtual hearing.
The motion “contains highly sensitive and personal information, including mental health information and information related to minors, that is not appropriate for public disclosure at this stage,” wrote George Vien and Emma Notis-McConarty, who represent Cannon-Grant.
Prosecutors opposed the motion, saying the documents should not be sealed “because there is a legal presumption of public access to judicial proceedings and records, and because there is a strong public interest in this case.”
The judge allowed the defense to file its motion under seal but rejected claims that her presence should be waived.
“Although difficult circumstances, Ms. Cannon-Grant’s offered justifications cannot waive the requirement, nor overcome related policy interests that underscore the importance of her in-person presence,” Kelley wrote Thursday in an entry on the court docket.
Cannon-Grant, who ran the now-defunct nonprofit Violence in Boston Inc., was indicted along with her husband, Clark Grant, in 2022 on charges that they raised more than $1 million for their charity and received nearly $60,000 in pandemic relief funds to provide meals for people in need, but instead spent much of the money on themselves.
The indictment alleges they spent donations on a vacation to Maryland, dining at restaurants, trips to a Boston nail salon, rent on their Roxbury apartment, and buying a car for a family member.
In March 2023, Clark Grant was killed in a motorcycle crash in Easton.
Cannon-Grant rose to prominence in 2020 after organizing a march in Franklin Park that drew thousands to protest the killing of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police. She formed a collaboration with a Dorchester restaurant to distribute more than 1,000 free meals a day to people struggling during the pandemic.
For her efforts, the mother of six was honored as a Bostonian of the Year by the Boston Globe Magazine and hailed as the city’s “best social justice advocate” by Boston Magazine.
The initial indictment charged Cannon-Grant and her husband with three separate schemes: defrauding people who donated money to their nonprofit; illegally collecting an estimated $100,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits; and lying on a mortgage application.
“Unemployment caught my ass. Asked me to provide documents by June, unless I’ll have to pay it all back,” Cannon-Grant texted her husband on March 26, 2021, authorities allege.
Additional fraud charges were brought in 2023, alleging that Cannon-Grant and Clark Grant received nearly $60,000 in pandemic relief funds to provide hot meals to struggling people but instead used the money to pay a car loan, auto insurance, and other personal expenses.
They were also accused of concealing their income to fraudulently obtain $12,600 in rental assistance funds from Boston’s office of housing stability in 2021, around the same time they were buying a new home in Taunton.
She started her nonprofit in 2017, operating out of her Roxbury home, but by 2020, it had moved to a sprawling headquarters in Hyde Park. Donations poured in, with the group receiving more than $50,000 in April 2020 alone, prosecutors allege.
While Cannon-Grant reported to the IRS and the state attorney general’s charity division that she received no salary, prosecutors said that in October 2020, she started paying herself $2,788 a week.