Convicted former Senator Bob Menendez and his two co-defendants filed another new trial request after the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York’s office discovered that his office had re-uploaded evidence to the jury that should have been excluded.
This is the second time in the past month that the prosecution has discovered an error with evidence on the jury’s laptop. This is Menendez’s third request for a new trial since he was found guilty of sixteen felonies in July.
The former New Jersey senator, who resigned in August, was convicted after a nine-week trial in which he and three co-defendants were charged in a federal corruption and bribery case brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. It was the second time in six years that Menendez was accused of bribery.
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) leaves federal court following his bribery trial in connection with an alleged corrupt relationship with three New Jersey businessmen, in New York City, U.S., July 16, 2024.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, who was also charged, allegedly received cash, gold bars and a luxury car in exchange for using his political influence.
Menendez and his co-defendants – three New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana, Fred Daibes and Jose Uribe – were part of a bribery scheme.
Hana and Daibes were also found guilty on all counts and filed similar motions for a new trial on December 20. Uribe was charged along with both Menendezes, but entered a guilty plea after striking a deal with federal prosecutors.
Menendez’s attorney Adam Fee wrote in his motion for a new trial that this is part of a series of mistakes made by the government.
“Yet in all of the government’s files, there is not a single affidavit explaining what actually happened, and only the most general account of how these errors were discovered,” Fee wrote. “Such a widespread pattern of constitutionally monumental errors cannot in good conscience be turned away. It is simply too much.”
Fee said the court should not only order a new trial, but also authorize appropriate discovery so that the court, all parties and the public can “understand how and why the integrity of the trial has been so seriously and irreparably compromised .”
The second time
Judge Sidney Stein denied a new trial request for Menendez, Hana and Daibes following the prosecution’s Dec. 13 hearing after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan discovered last month that nine of the more than 3,000 pieces of evidence contained material that should have been redacted.
Prosecutors said defense lawyers also did not notice the error and that the material was unlikely to affect the verdict.
Judge Stein issued a 78-page ruling that there was “no manifest injustice” in the evidence and denied the new trial requests.
Days after the verdict, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan filed that further evidence had been discovered on December 11, this time lengthy text exchanges, which included unredacted portions.
The pages of text messages were from September 2019 to January 2022.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Former Sen. Menendez files new trial request again. This is why
