A judge shut down a bid last week from GOP provocateur Roger Stone for a retrial, only revealing the convicted Trump ally’s request in a public order on Wednesday.
Stone moved for a new trial under seal, purportedly claiming that the jury pool in the case had been tainted by publicity.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson revealed Stone’s request in a Feb. 5 order denying it, her first appearance on the docket since the entire prosecutorial team resigned on Tuesday. That came after DOJ leadership intervened in the case to recommend a lighter sentence than the 7-9 term of imprisonment that prosecutors had proposed.
From the order, Stone apparently demanded a new trial on the grounds that one juror worked for the IRS.
Though Stone’s motion remains redacted, Berman Jackson retold Stone’s argument in her order dismissing it.
Stone purportedly argued that the juror’s work as an attorney for the IRS meant that Berman Jackson should have “removed [the juror] for bias.” During the trial, Stone’s attorneys raised the issue and attempted to have the juror removed from the pool.
Berman Jackson denied that request, the filing states.
Stone also argued that the same juror was contaminated after the person admitted during the jury selection process to having been shown an article in the Wall Street Journal about the trial.
In her rejection of the retrial demand, Berman Jackson said that Stone’s attorneys had the opportunity to flag these concerns during the jury selection process and failed to do so. She noted that the defense lawyers had successfully sought to strike several potential jurors, including some who they flagged for their government jobs.
The juror that Stone’s lawyers focused on was not among the jurors they sought to strike during the jury selection process, Berman Jackson wrote.
“There was no evidence that the juror took any steps on [redacted] initiative to defy the Court’s instructions, and [redacted] limited exposure to a single piece in the newspaper was of minimal significance,” the judge said. She added that Stone failed to present grounds for a new trial.
This story has been corrected to reflect that the order, not the request, was issued on Feb. 5.
Read the filing here:
