NEWARK, N.J. _ Jurors considering criminal corruption charges against U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez on Monday told the judge overseeing the case they were deadlocked and asked for help on what to do next.
The note sent to the courtroom said: "As of 2pm, on behalf of all jurors, we cannot reach a unanimous decision on any of the charges. Is there any additional guidance? And what do we do now?"
U.S. District Court Judge William H. Walls told them to go home for the day and return Tuesday to continue their talks.
Earlier in the day, four jurors and three alternates told Walls that they had read or heard something about the case over the weekend before he added a new member to the panel and ordered the jury to begin deliberating the charges all over again.
Walls asked about jurors' exposure to outside-the-courtroom information after a juror excused from deliberations on Thursday caused an uproar by telling reporters that the senior Democratic senator from New Jersey and his co-defendant were innocent, the government was corrupt and the jury was divided.
After less than 20 minutes of questioning, which was closed to the media, Walls returned the courtroom and instructed the jury to begin its deliberations "from scratch" with an alternate taking the place of the excused juror. He did not dismiss any of the jurors who said they had read or heard about the case.
"You are now a new jury," Walls said. "You are to disregard whatever you negotiated or deliberated on last week. You're starting afresh."
Menendez's lead attorney Abbe Lowell, who was present for the questioning in Walls' chambers, later said in open court that one juror had admitted to discussing the case with a co-worker while another discussed it with a spouse _ despite the fact that Walls had instructed them repeatedly throughout the trial not to discuss the case with anyone outside the courtroom until after a verdict had been reached.
Earlier Monday, Walls downplayed the impact that reading the dismissed juror's statements to the press could have on the remaining jurors.
"What they read in the paper most likely is what they heard in that jury room," Walls said, adding at another point: "The inevitable solution is to have a new jury to begin deliberations anew."
Deliberations spanned three full days last week and could continue for several more days, extending an already lengthy trial that began Sept. 6.
After she was excused from the jury last week to take a long-planned vacation to the Bahamas, Evelyn Arroyo-Maultsby, a 61-year-old Hillside resident, told reporters she didn't think Menendez had done anything wrong and that the verdict would have been not guilty had she been able to stay until the end of deliberations.
She also suggested that her fellow jurors had prevented her from sending a note to Walls and had stalled during deliberations in hopes of getting an alternate less dug-in on her view of the case.
On her way out the door Thursday, Arroyo-Maultsby apparently left a note for Walls complaining that "I find it very unfair that after nine weeks, this jury refused to present a verdict that was reached on Wednesday," according to an excerpt read out loud in court Monday.
Lowell argued that Arroyo-Maultsby's claims raised the possibility that there was misconduct among the jury, and he pleaded with Walls to ask jurors whether the woman's account was true.
Walls declined, characterizing the woman's statements as those of a "disgruntled juror" and even accusing the defense of seeking a mistrial.
"If you're saying this is the genesis of a mistrial," Walls told defense attorneys, that is "way off target."
"That's life that they ran the clock out on her," the judge said at another point. "They didn't have her vote and they weren't going to give her their vote."
Walls did later tell jurors that "every juror has the right to communicate with me at any and all times."
Menendez stands accused of using his office to help co-defendant Salomon Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor and longtime friend, to secure visas for his foreign girlfriends and to intervene in a lucrative port security contract in the Dominican Republic and a multimillion-dollar Medicare dispute.
In exchange, prosecutors argued in court, Menendez took bribes in the form of luxury vacations, free flights on Melgen's private jets and $660,000 in political contributions.
Menendez has vigorously denied the charges, saying that he will be vindicated at trial and run for re-election next year.
In total, Menendez faces 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.
The fraud charges carry the most serious penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
