Bob Menendez seeks new trial, citing prosecutors admitted error – NBC New York
Bob Menendez requested a decide Wednesday to put aside responsible verdicts that compelled his resignation from the U.S. Senate and grant a brand new bribery trial.
Legal professionals for the New Jersey Democrat stated 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 prices, together with bribery, partly based mostly on an allegation that he accepted bribes in trade for approving navy help to Egypt.
He awaits a Jan. 29 sentencing. Menendez resigned from the Senate in August.
At trial, prosecutors stated 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 decide had dominated must be excluded from a number of trial displays was as a substitute inadvertently loaded onto a pc utilized by jurors to achieve their verdict.
Of their letter, prosecutors stated incorrect variations of 9 authorities displays had 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 mild 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 stated there was a “affordable chance” 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 had been of “secondary relevance and cumulative with considerable correctly admitted proof.”
Legal professionals for Menendez, although, stated of their submission Wednesday that the displays contained the “solely proof within the document” tying Menendez to navy help to Egypt, “an otherwise-missing truth on the very middle of the central cost towards him.”
“In mild of this critical breach, a brand new trial is unavoidable, regardless of all of the exhausting work and sources that went into the primary one,” they wrote.
The attorneys criticized the federal government’s try to shift blame for the error onto them by saying they seen the laptop computer’s contents and permitted it.
“That’s each factually and legally outrageous,” they wrote. “The protection had only some hours to assessment a laptop computer that contained almost 3,000 displays; it had the suitable to anticipate that the federal government had not mislabeled non-introduced and constitutionally barred displays as admitted ones. If this had been handled as a waiver, that will give events the inducement to deliberately attempt to pull a quick one.”
