Bob Menendez requested a choose Wednesday to put aside responsible verdicts that pressured his resignation from the U.S. Senate and grant a brand new bribery trial.
Attorneys for the New Jersey Democrat mentioned in papers filed in Manhattan federal courtroom {that a} latest revelation by prosecutors that improper proof was placed on a pc utilized by jurors throughout deliberations signifies that a brand new trial is “unavoidable.”
The 70-year-old Menendez was convicted in July of 16 fees, together with bribery, partially based mostly on an allegation that he accepted bribes in trade for approving army help to Egypt.
He awaits a Jan. 29 sentencing. Menendez resigned from the Senate in August.
At trial, prosecutors mentioned Menendez accepted gold and money from three New Jersey businessmen in return for favors.
Earlier this month, prosecutors revealed in a letter to Decide Sidney H. Stein that they’d found that some factual data that the choose had dominated needs to be excluded from a number of trial displays was as a substitute inadvertently loaded onto a pc utilized by jurors to succeed in their verdict.
Of their letter, prosecutors mentioned incorrect variations of 9 authorities displays have been lacking some redactions ordered by Stein to make sure that the displays didn’t violate the Structure’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects speech referring to data shared by legislators.
Prosecutors argued of their letter that no motion was essential in gentle of the error for a number of causes, together with that protection attorneys didn’t object after they inspected paperwork on that laptop computer earlier than it was given to jurors.
Additionally they mentioned there was a “reasonable likelihood” that no jurors noticed the erroneously redacted variations of the displays and that the paperwork couldn’t have prejudiced the defendants anyway as a result of they have been of “secondary relevance and cumulative with abundant properly admitted evidence.”
Attorneys for Menendez, although, mentioned of their submission Wednesday that the displays contained the “only evidence in the record” tying Menendez to army help to Egypt, “an otherwise-missing fact at the very center of the central charge against him.”
“In light of this serious breach, a new trial is unavoidable, despite all the hard work and resources that went into the first one,” they wrote.
The attorneys criticized the federal government’s try and shift blame for the error onto them by saying they seen the laptop computer’s contents and authorised it.
“That is both factually and legally outrageous,” they wrote. “The defense had only a few hours to review a laptop that contained nearly 3,000 exhibits; it had the right to expect that the government had not mislabeled non-introduced and constitutionally barred exhibits as admitted ones. If this were treated as a waiver, that would give parties the incentive to intentionally try to pull a fast one.”
