The U.S. Justice Department has filed its opposition to separate requests by Ray Martinez and Jenifer O’Neal for acquittals and new trials, arguing last Wednesday and Friday that a jury found both guilty based on witness testimony, bank records, invoices, contracts, text messages, phone calls and the defendants’ “own conduct.”
The former police commissioner and Management and Budget Office director are set to be sentenced in June. A jury found both guilty in December of crimes including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering conspiracy. Martinez was further charged with and convicted of obstructing justice. Upon their convictions, both defendants swiftly filed motions for acquittal, questioning — as they did at trial — the credibility of the government’s cooperating witness, David Whitaker, and other procedural matters.
“A verdict is not legally insufficient because a cooperating witness has a criminal record,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Cherrisse Amaro and DOJ Trial Attorney Alexandre Dempsey wrote last week. “The relevant question is not whether Whitaker had reasons to lie, but whether the jury had a rational basis to believe his testimony. Here, his testimony was significantly corroborated, and the jury plainly did believe it.”
Amaro and Dempsey noted that, according to the evidence at trial, Martinez accepted bribes from Whitaker in the form of cash, luxury travel, payment of personal expenses, private-school tuition for his children and restaurant equipment. In exchange, Martinez “used his official authority to approve invoices and assist with awarding Whitaker a $1.4 million dollar contract” funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.
“O’Neal, who served as the Director of the Virgin Islands Office of Management and Budget, knowingly approved an inflated invoice under that same contract and later accepted a $17,730 lease payment for her business from the inflated invoice,” they added.
O’Neal’s attorney, Dale Lionel Smith, has argued that jurors were prejudiced against his client by “the overwhelming evidence of a long-running and unrelated conspiracy” between Martinez and Whitaker, of which O’Neal “was never made aware.”
“As a result, she was deprived of her constitutional right to a fair trial, which could have only been provided to her by a trial separate and apart,” from Martinez, Smith argued.
Though Martinez’s attorneys moved at trial to sever the two defendants’ cases after opening arguments — which U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kearney denied — O’Neal “never joined Martinez’s oral motion to sever,” according to the Justice Department.
“Despite not raising the issue before or during the trial, the defendant now asks the Court to overturn her convictions based on vague and unspecified allegations of prejudice related to the joint trial with her coconspirator,” Amaro and Dempsey wrote. “The Court should deny this belated request.”
