Ex-US Sen. Bob Menendez seeks new trial, citing prosecutors’ recently admitted error
NEW YORK– Bob Menendez asked a judge on Wednesday to set aside the guilty verdicts that forced him to resign from the US Senate and allow a new bribery trial.
Lawyers for the New Jersey Democrat said in documents filed in Manhattan federal court that a recent disclosure by prosecutors says spurious evidence was placed on a computer used by jurors during deliberations, meaning a retrial is “inevitable.”
The 70-year-old Menendez does convicted in July of 16 chargesincluding bribery, based in part on the claim that he accepted bribes in exchange for approving military aid to Egypt.
He is awaiting sentencing on January 29. Menendez resigned from the Senate in August.
During the trial, prosecutors said Menendez accepted gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for favors.
Earlier this month, prosecutors revealed in a letter to Judge Sidney H. Stein that they had discovered that certain factual information that the judge ordered to be excluded from several court documents was instead accidentally loaded onto a computer used by jurors to their judgment.
In their letter, prosecutors said inaccurate versions of nine government documents were missing some redactions ordered by Stein to ensure the productions did not violate the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects speech regarding information conveyed by legislators is shared.
Prosecutors argued in their letter that no action was necessary in light of the error for several reasons, including the fact that defense attorneys did not object after inspecting documents on that laptop before it was given to jurors.
They also said there was a “reasonable probability” that no jurors had seen the misredacted versions of the evidence and that the documents could not have prejudiced the defendants anyway because they were of “secondary relevance and cumulative with an abundance of correct admitted evidence.”
However, attorneys for Menendez said in their filing Wednesday that the exhibits contained the “only evidence in the record” linking Menendez to military assistance to Egypt, “an otherwise missing fact that is central to the central indictment against him.”
“In light of this serious violation, a new trial is inevitable, despite all the hard work and resources put into the first one,” they wrote.
The lawyers criticized the government’s attempt to shift blame for the error, saying they had reviewed the laptop’s contents and approved it.
“That is both factually and legally scandalous,” they wrote. “The defense had only a few hours to review a laptop containing nearly 3,000 pieces of evidence; it had a right to expect that the government had not mislabeled unintroduced and constitutionally prohibited exhibitions as permitted exhibitions. If this were treated as a waiver, it would give the parties the incentive to deliberately attempt a quick waiver.”