The case against former V.I. Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and former V.I. Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal is in the hands of 12 jurors.
Attorneys for the United States, Martinez and O’Neal, presented their closing statements Wednesday afternoon, one week after jury selection began. Shortly before 6 p.m., jurors informed U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kearney that they will begin deliberating Thursday morning. On Wednesday morning, Martinez’s attorneys told Kearney that the former commissioner would not be testifying in his own defense. O’Neal waived her right to testify Tuesday through her attorney.
Martinez faces five counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, one count of money laundering conspiracy and two counts of obstruction of justice. O’Neal has been charged with two counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of bribery and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
The charges against them stem from payments to Martinez from the government’s cooperating witness, former contractor and convicted felon David Whitaker. Later, prosecutors claimed, Martinez helped Whitaker land a $1.4 million V.I. Police Department contract funded through the federal American Rescue Plan Act. Whitaker testified this week that he inflated invoices for Martinez and O’Neal to authorize in exchange for various kickbacks.
“Over the past week, this trial revealed the story of how bold they were when they carried out their plan,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Cherrisse Amaro told jurors during the United States’ closing statement Wednesday, adding that the evidence presented also showed how desperate the defendants were to cover up their activity after federal investigators seized their phones in June 2024.
Revisiting the evidence and testimony the government presented over the past week, Amaro described Martinez and Whitaker as having a ”quid pro quo relationship” and referenced recordings and text conversations in which O’Neal stated her desire to leave OMB to run a coffee shop in Yacht Haven Grande.
“It was all calculated, deliberate and corrupt,” she said to the jury. “And now, the responsibility to hold them accountable lies with you.”
Attorney Miguel Oppenheimer presented closing remarks for Martinez. Beyond any inferences they may have made during Oppenheimer’s questioning and cross-examination of witnesses, the closing statement marked the first time jurors heard Martinez’s side of the story in detail because his attorneys reserved their right to make an opening statement last week.
Oppenheimer argued that the cybersecurity contract awarded to Whitaker’s company in October 2023 passed through multiple government agencies and presumed levels of oversight before it was eventually signed by a V.I. Justice Department representative, V.I. Property and Procurement Commissioner Lisa Alejandro and Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.
“In other words people, Ray Martinez had nothing to do with this,” he claimed.
Addressing Martinez and Whitaker’s alleged scheme to mask some of the earliest payments by inking an agreement for a TV show called “Steak Out,” in which Martinez and other police officers would supposedly discuss cold cases while cooking steaks, Oppenheimer said the show never materialized because it was derailed by the federal investigation. Martinez’s restaurant, Don Felito’s Cookshop, opened last summer — one year after he resigned amid the FBI’s investigation.
Oppenheimer also claimed that Whitaker’s payments would have been better concealed if the two were actually involved in a criminal conspiracy rather than plainly visible in bank statements and wire transfers.
“Nobody’s hiding anything,” he claimed. “It’s public. It’s open.”
That claim was one of several that Alex Dempsey, a trial attorney with the U.S. Justice Department, responded to during the government’s rebuttal.
“Wire transfers are not public,” he told jurors. “They were obtained by a grand jury subpoena.”
Taking aim at the bribery charge, Oppenheimer pointed to the slow pace of the Virgin Islands government. The Mon Ethos contract bounced between departments for months before it was finally authorized, and Whitaker had to repeatedly prod officials to pay the company’s invoices.
If Whitaker was bribing officials for contracts and invoices, Oppenheimer argued, “that wasn’t money well-spent.”
Last week, Whitaker testified that he first began buying Martinez kitchen equipment “so that he would stop working on his restaurant during work hours and pay my invoices.”
Jurors next heard from O’Neal’s attorney, Dale Lionel Smith, who told them to ask themselves why the government brought a case “based solely on the sworn testimony of a prolific liar” whom, by their own admission, they don’t even trust. Smith pressed Whitaker Monday on statements he supposedly made to the FBI when they first approached him about an investigation into “bugged” government offices and a fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan in September 2023. At one point, he asked Whitaker if it was true that he told agents that the governor was taking bribes.
“I may have said that,” Whitaker acknowledged.
In his closing statement, Smith suggested that federal investigators went after O’Neal in the hope that she would testify against even higher-ranking officials.
“They’re hunting big fish — big game,” he said of the investigators.
Smith described Whitaker as “a sociopathic liar” and the case against O’Neal as “a sociopathic liar’s investigation.”
“I’m really afraid for Ms. O’Neal. These are very serious charges, and I ask you: did they present sufficient evidence?” he asked the jury before also questioning whether the evidence was reliable.
“We are not asking you to trust only the words of a convicted felon,” Dempsey told jurors during his rebuttal, reminding the jury of the dozens of documents, recordings and text exchanges the United States presented over the past week.
The jury will reconvene at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
