Senator Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have filed a flurry of motions seeking to prevent certain evidence from being included in their upcoming trial on federal corruption charges.
In his motions, Bob Menendez asks Judge Sidney Stein to prohibit any evidence related to his campaign finance reports, his financial disclosure forms, his federal tax returns, or his “financial needs and desires” – all of which, he argues, are not pertinent to the case and could serve to confuse or prejudice the jury against him.
“None of the evidence the government offers indicates that Senator Menendez has financial difficulty or lives outside his means in any way,” Menendez’s attorneys wrote in one motion. “Simply put, the government’s purported evidence of Senator Menendez’s ‘financial needs and desires’ is entirely irrelevant to the charges in this case and will only be used to invite the jury to inaccurately and improperly assume that Senator Menendez’s alleged preference for expensive items reveals a predisposition to accept bribes.”
Attorneys for Nadine Menendez similarly sent a letter to the judge asking to exclude the indictment’s contention that she has a “preference for expensive, luxury items, such as handbags, jewelry, and upscale meals.”
“Based on the limited information the Government has provided, the proposed evidence should be excluded,” the attorneys wrote. “Numerous courts have recognized that evidence purporting to show a criminal defendant’s lavish lifestyle or spending patterns directly implicates the long-established principle that ‘appeals to class prejudice are highly improper and cannot be condoned and trial courts should ever be alert to prevent them.’”
Notably, Bob Menendez is also seeking to exclude evidence related to his prior federal corruption trial, which ended in a mistrial. That case is unrelated to the current charges against Menendez, but the senator said he was worried federal prosecutors might try to conflate the two cases and muddle the trial.
“The prior alleged crimes are so devoid of logical connection to this case that no defense argument could even plausibly ‘open the door’ to the admission of this evidence,” Menendez’s attorneys wrote. “Permitting the proffered evidence will create substantial jury confusion, conflate evidence of distinct alleged crimes, distract the jury from the actual charges in this case, and ‘lure the fact finder into declaring guilt on a ground different from proof specific to the offense charged.’”
In one further motion, Menendez also requests the usage of a jury questionnaire to screen the jury pool prior to the trial’s May 6 start date.
“In light of the intense pre-trial publicity surrounding this case, a questionnaire would assist the Court and the parties in screening potential jurors as efficiently as possible,” the attorneys wrote in their motion. “A written questionnaire is also likely to elicit more accurate responses, helping to detect disqualifying biases that a venireperson may be less willing to reveal during oral questioning in open court.”
Stein has not been especially amenable to Menendez’s past motions, rejecting efforts to delay the trial and to throw out the charges entirely for pertaining to constitutionally protected conduct; it remains to be seen whether he will be more open to the senator’s new motions.