U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied Roger Stone’s request for a new trial on Thursday.
Court documents show that Stone must appear in person “at the institution designated by the Bureau of Prisons” within 14 days to serve out his sentence. Stone is currently out on bond.
In her decision, Berman-Jackson said that Stone’s defense had not produced grounds for a retrial, nor shown a “serious miscarriage of justice.”
Stone’s counsel sought a new trial after the jury foreperson, Tomeka Hart, was revealed to have anti-Trump messages on her social media pages. There were also allegations that she lied on her jury application to appear not biased against Republicans.
Berman-Jackson pointed out in her decision that Hart openly answered questions about her affiliation with Democratic politics.
“The juror’s personal affiliation with Democratic politics was set forth in her written answers,” Judge Berman’s opinion read. “She said straight out that she had opinions about the ‘officials’ on the list of people who might be mentioned in the case, and Donald Trump was the most prominent, if not the only, ‘official’ named.”
Prosecutors originally recommended up to a 9-year sentence for Stone, and then Trump tweeted.
When the DOJ indicated that the sentence should and could be lightened, the prosecutors resigned. Stone was eventually sentenced to 40 months.
While Hart came forward to defend the prosecution team, the remainder of jurors has remained anonymous, and asked the court not to reveal their identities out of fear.
“I try to stay away from danger, but now it seems like the danger is coming to me,” wrote an individual known as Juror H. “This whole situation blows me away, because all that I expected before the trial was simply appearing for jury duty. I feel that I should be protected for performing my civic duty.”
Read more on the statements of jurors here at Rolling Stone; read the source on the Berman-Jackson decision at Newsweek.
