A month after admitting that certain pieces of unredacted evidence had been mistakenly loaded onto laptops provided to jurors, prosecutors in the corruption trial of former Senator Bob Menendez are disclosing more evidence that accidentally made its way in front of jurors.
In a legal filing submitted to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein today, prosecutors wrote that certain chat chain exhibits admitted into the trial “contained small portions of material covered by the Court’s rulings excluding certain evidence.” As was the case in their prior filings, though, prosecutors said there is no need for any further action given the minuscule chance that any of the jurors noticed the unredacted chats amid the reams of evidence with which they were presented.
“[B]ecause there is no reasonable possibility that the jury found, in its two days of deliberations, these messages buried deep in multipage exhibits that all counsel did not find in weeks of focused searching, these exhibits do not require any action,” prosecutors wrote, noting that Menendez’s own lawyers never raised any issue with the evidence provided to jurors.
“Although all of these exhibits were admitted into evidence without objection, none of them was ever published to the jury, referenced in any party’s jury addresses, or mentioned in the presence of the jury at all,” they added.
After prosecutors first admitted to their evidence mistake last month, attorneys representing Menendez – who was found guilty on all counts in July – requested a new trial, arguing that “the pall cast over Senator Menendez’s convictions by the revelation of the government’s error – and the attendant prejudice to Senator Menendez – is more than sufficient basis for this Court to vacate all counts of conviction and order a new trial.” It’s possible that the former senator’s lawyers will use today’s admission to further bolster their case.
Stein has not yet made a determination on that motion yet, but he did reject a separate flurry of motions for new trials last week from Menendez and two of his co-defendants – motions that had effectively asked Stein to overturn a case he himself had overseen, which was always unlikely to happen.
“The jury’s guilty verdicts were readily supported by the extensive witness testimony and extensive documentary evidence admitted at trial, and there is no manifest injustice requiring a new trial,” Stein wrote, though he did overturn one count (out of 16) that he determined to be multiplicitous.