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.
Attorneys for the New Jersey Democrat stated in papers filed in Manhattan federal court docket {that a} current 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 primarily based on an allegation that he accepted bribes in change for approving army support 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 reveals was as a substitute inadvertently loaded onto a pc utilized by jurors to succeed in their verdict.
Of their letter, prosecutors stated incorrect variations of 9 authorities reveals have been lacking some redactions ordered by Stein to make sure that the reveals didn’t violate the Structure’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects speech regarding data shared by legislators.
Prosecutors argued of their letter that no motion was vital in mild of the error for a number of causes, together with that protection legal professionals didn’t object after they inspected paperwork on that laptop computer earlier than it was given to jurors.
In addition they stated there was a “cheap chance” that no jurors noticed the erroneously redacted variations of the reveals and that the paperwork couldn’t have prejudiced the defendants anyway as a result of they have been of “secondary relevance and cumulative with plentiful correctly admitted proof.”
Attorneys for Menendez, although, stated of their submission Wednesday that the reveals contained the “solely proof within the document” tying Menendez to army support 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 laborious work and sources that went into the primary one,” they wrote.
The legal professionals criticized the federal government’s try to shift blame for the error onto them by saying they seen the laptop computer’s contents and accredited 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 reveals; it had the precise to anticipate that the federal government had not mislabeled non-introduced and constitutionally barred reveals as admitted ones. If this have been handled as a waiver, that will give events the inducement to deliberately attempt to pull a quick one.”
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