Judge denies former pro-Armenian senator’s request to overturn corruption conviction Over improper evidence claim

A federal judge rejected former pro-Armenian Senator Bob Menendez’s (D-N.J.) attempt to overturn his corruption conviction and secure a new trial, despite claims that jurors had access to trial exhibits that were not properly redacted during their deliberations.

Menendez, along with two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, had hoped the discovery would lead to the invalidation of the jury’s guilty verdict, Caliber.Az reports citing foreign media.

US District Judge Sidney Stein, who presided over the trial, stated in his 14-page ruling: “Because the defendants have waived any objection to the improperly redacted contents of the laptop and its submission to the jury and because the defendants were not prejudiced by the improperly redacted material, defendants’ supplemental motions for a new trial are denied.”

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Menendez, declined to comment on the ruling.

Menendez expressed his disagreement with the decision and indicated he would appeal. “To think that prosecutors can put unconstitutional and inadmissible evidence in front of the jury, assure the defence they only provided the jury with admitted exhibits, and escape any consequences, is outrageous,” Menendez said in a statement.

“This is precisely the sort of misconduct by prosecutors that has caused so many to question the motives and judgments of overzealous prosecutors who act above the law and believe they are unanswerable to anyone,” he continued.

After a nine-week trial, a New York jury convicted Menendez in July on all 16 criminal counts, including bribery and acting as a foreign agent. Following the conviction, Menendez resigned from the Senate and is scheduled to be sentenced on January 29, with federal prosecutors seeking a 15-year prison term.

In November, prosecutors revealed that nine exhibits provided to jurors on a laptop during deliberations contained material that should have been redacted. Although prosecutors acknowledged the error, they insisted that the convictions should remain intact.

Judge Stein, a Clinton appointee, ruled that the defendants shared responsibility for ensuring the proper exhibits were submitted and noted that Menendez and the businessmen had failed to raise any objections before the laptop was sent to the jury room.

“Indeed, if these exhibits were as critical as Menendez now claims, surely they would have been amongst the ‘select number of exhibit files’… that the defence read during its review of the laptop, but they were either not read by the defense or the error was not noticed,” Stein wrote.

The judge also argued that, even if Menendez had been able to object, he would not be entitled to a new trial because there was only an “infinitesimal chance” that jurors had viewed the mistakenly provided materials.

According to Stein, the evidence in question was not crucial: “The extra-record material was a few phrases buried in thousands of exhibits and many thousands of pages of evidence. All defense counsel as well as the government attorneys—acutely attuned to the evidence in this case—failed to notice the improper redactions during their preparation and review of the jury laptop, and for a full four months thereafter,” Stein noted.

By Vafa Guliyeva