Menendez trial: Dismissed juror says senator 'not guilty on all counts'

A woman excused from the jury Thursday at the corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez said she was dead set against convicting the New Jersey Democrat and his co-defendant.

“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 a stroke of bad luck for Menendez and his co-defendant Salomon Melgen, the U.S. district court judge overseeing the case dismissed Arroyo-Maultsby on Thursday so she could take a long-scheduled vacation, a promise the judge made to her during jury selection in August. 

The 12-person jury in the case has not reached a unanimous verdict after three full days of deliberations and will resume its 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 holdout, she said, and estimated that three or four jurors total were leaning toward a conviction.

"We have someone in there that definitely don't want to hear it and saying he's guilty," she told reporters as she left the federal courthouse in Newark. “I think it’s going to be a hung jury.”

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She also said she felt the government was "railroading" Menendez.

"I didn't like this experience," she said. "The unfairness and how it's being presented, talking about him being corrupt. I think the government is corrupt. I think the government was the crooked one, not Menendez."

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on Thursday.

Miles Feinstein, a noted defense attorney from New Jersey who has handled many government corruption cases, said losing Arroyo-Maultsby is a real blow to the defense and that her statements to the press could create grounds for a mistrial.

Now that she’s gone, the deliberation has to start over, creating enormous pressure for other holdout jurors to cave in just to finish the process, he said.

“The fact that they have to start over, that’s really putting pressure on the jury,” Feinstein said.

Arroyo-Maultsby's reasoning for doubting the government's case and holding that the men were "not guilty on all counts" echoed many of the arguments made by defense attorneys during the trial, now in its tenth week.

"That's his friend," she said of Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye doctor who has been close with the senator since the 1990s. "And if his friend wanted to take him anywhere he wants, why not? Just because he's a senator, his friend can't take him anywhere?"

She added: "When they said that it was going to be conspiracy, that they planned this, that’s to me, I don’t see that. Planning that, no, I don’t see that. That’s a friendship.”

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Menendez stands accused of using his office to help co-defendant Melgen 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.

At one point Thursday, Arroyo-Maultsby said there was discussion among jurors about potentially talking to the judge overseeing the case, William H. Walls, to see if he could help break their impasse.

"I told them that they're holding back on what I want to say and that we should go and let the judge know how we feel, and they didn't want to," she said. "They said, well, let's go more, maybe he might change our mind. But then, I told them they weren't going to change mine and there was no reason for them to try to change my mind."

She also suggested that the other jurors might have been stalling during deliberations in hopes of getting an alternate less dug-in on her view of the case.

“Really, personally, I think they was holding and taking their time so the next person could come on," Arroyo-Maultsby said.

Feinstein said the process has been tainted by letting the woman begin the deliberations with her vacation looming, knowing that she might not finish them.

And jurors are not allowed to discuss the case with anyone outside the courtroom until after a verdict has been reached. The fact that the juror was excused and then chose to speak to the press has violated the secrecy of the deliberation process, Feinstein said.

“This opens a real can of worms,” he said. “The trial should not be in this position at this time.”

Feinstein wasn’t sure whether the judge was required by law to advise the departing juror against talking to the press, but he said it would have been “common sense and logic” that he would do so.

He added that the situation could have been avoided if the juror had not been allowed to begin deliberations in the first place, given that she might not be able to finish them.

“I would argue that a vacation is trumped by your duty as a juror,” Feinstein said. “A vacation, as opposed to what’s at stake here? Go on vacation some other time.” 

Arroyo-Maultsby said she wrapped up her civic duty with some parting words for her fellow jurors.

“I said to them, 'Please, make the right decision because they’re the one that’s not going to be able to sleep at night,'” she said.

On his way out of the courthouse Thursday, Menendez said — without knowing the views of the dismissed juror — he had "faith" that the replacement juror would join the others in reaching a not-guilty verdict.

"I want to thank the juror who was excused for her service," he said.

Deliberations will not be held Friday, Veterans Day, and are scheduled to resume Monday at 9:30 a.m.

Staff Writer Richard Cowen contributed to this article. Email: pugliese@northjersey.com and carrera@northjersey.com