NEWARK, N.J. _ A woman excused from the jury at U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez's corruption trial on Thursday said she was dead set against convicting the New Jersey Democrat.
"If I would have been there all the way to the end, it would have been not guilty," said Evelyn Arroyo-Maultsby, 61, of Hillside. "All the way to the end, not guilty."
But in what appears to be extraordinarily bad luck for Menendez and his co-defendant Salomon Melgen, the U.S. district court judge overseeing the case excused Arroyo-Maultsby Thursday so she could take a long-scheduled vacation to Florida.
The 12-person jury in the case has not reached a unanimous verdict after three full days of deliberations and will resume their discussions Monday with an alternate juror in Arroyo-Maultsby's place.
Arroyo-Maultsby described the dynamics in the jury room as "very stressful" and said the "majority is still saying not guilty."
But there is at least one adamant hold out, she said.
"We have someone in there that definitely doesn't want to hear it," she told reporters as she left the federal courthouse in Newark. "I think it's going to be a hung jury."
She also said she felt the government was "railroading" Menendez.
"When they said that it was going to be conspiracy, that they planned this, that's to me, I don't see that," Arroyo-Maultsby. "Planning that, no, I don't see that. That's a friendship."
The most serious of the charges against Menendez and Melgen, both 63, carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
The government in its 18-count indictment charged Menendez, the senior Democratic senator from New Jersey, with six counts of bribery, three counts of honest services fraud, one count of conspiracy, one count of interstate travel to carry out bribery and one count of making false statements on his congressional financial disclosures to conceal the crimes.
Melgen faces the same charges except for the false statements accusation.
Attorneys for both men have vigorously fought the charges in a protracted trail that started Sept. 6.
The facts of the case are not much disputed. Menendez advocated in meetings with executive branch officials for positions that could help Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor and longtime friend, in his multimillion-dollar reimbursement dispute with Medicare and a contract dispute one of his companies had with the Dominican Republic.
The senator also helped foreign women get U.S. visas to visit the married doctor in Florida.
In the same time period, Melgen provided the senator trips on his private jets, let him stay at his home in a Dominican Republic resort and made $660,000 in political contributions to entities that could help Menendez win re-election in 2012.
Jurors must decide whether prosecutors proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Menendez acted with corrupt intent. Defense attorneys have argued at trial that Menendez was animated not by bribery but rather his friendship with Melgen and broader policy concerns.
