United States v. Stewart

323 F. Supp. 2d 606, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12538, 2004 WL 1520527
District Court, S.D. New York·Decided July 8, 2004·No. 03 CR.717(MGC)·Published·Cited by 9 cases

Opinion

OPINION

CEDARBAUM, District Judge.

Defendants Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic have moved for a new trial pursuant to Fed.R.Cr.P. 33 on the ground that an expert witness for the Government has been charged with committing perjury in his testimony. Because there is no reasonable likelihood that this perjury could have affected the jury’s verdict, arid because overwhelming independent evidence supports the verdict, the motions are denied.

BACKGROUND

Stewart and Bacanovic were indicted on criminal charges arising from Martha Stewart’s December 27, 2001 sale of 3,928 shares of stock in ImClone Systems, Inc. (“ImClone”). ImClone is a biotechnology company whose then-chief executive officer, Samuel Waksal, was a friend of Stewart’s and a client of Stewart’s stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, defendant- Bacanovic. *609 On December 25, 2001, ImClone learned that the Food and Drug Administration had rejected the company’s application for approval of Erbitux, a cancer-fighting drug. On December 28, the day after Stewart sold her shares, ImClone publicly announced that the Erbitux application had been rejected. Shortly after Im-Clone’s announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York launched investigations into trading in ImClone stock in advance of the announcement to the public of the news about Erbitux.

Each defendant was questioned twice in the course of these investigations. Stewart was interviewed at the office of the United States Attorney on February 4, 2002 and by telephone on April 10, 2002. Among those present during Stewart’s interviews were Special Agent Catherine Farmer of the FBI and Helene Glotzer, a lawyer with the SEC’s Enforcement Division. Bacanovic was interviewed by telephone on January 7, 2002. Present at that interview were Glotzer and another SEC attorney, Jill Slansky, as well as David Marcus, a Merrill Lynch attorney. On February 13, 2002, Bacanovic testified under oath before the SEC. He was questioned by three SEC attorneys: Glotzer, Slansky, and Laurent Sacharoff. His testimony was tape recorded.

The jury convicted Stewart of making false statements to investigators during her February 4 interview, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001. The jury found Stewart guilty of making the following false statements, each of which was a specification in Count Three of the Indictment. 1 Stewart told the Government investigators that she spoke to Bacanovic on December 27 and instructed him to sell her ImClone shares after he informed her that ImClone was trading below $60 per share. Stewart also stated that during the same telephone call, she and Bacanovic discussed the performance of the stock of her own company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (“MSLO”), and discussed K-Mart. She told investigators that she had decided to sell her ImClone shares at that time because she did not want to be bothered during her vacation. Stewart stated that she did not know if there was any record of a telephone message left by Bacanovic on December 27 in her assistant’s message log. She also said that since December 28, she had only spoken with Bacanovic once regarding ImClone, and they had only discussed matters in the public arena. Finally, Stewart told investigators that since December 28, Bacanovic had told her that Merrill Lynch had been questioned by the SEC regarding ImClone, but that he did not tell her that he had been questioned by the SEC or that he had been questioned about her account.

The jury acquitted Stewart of one specification charged in Count Three: her statement that she and Bacanovic had agreed, at a time when ImClone was trading at $74 per share, that she would sell her shares when ImClone started trading at $60 per share.

The jury found Stewart guilty of making the following false statements to investigators during her April 10 interview. Each of these statements was a specification in Count Four of the Indictment. Stewart said that she did not recall if she and Bacanovic had spoken about Waksal on *610 December 27 and that she did not recall being informed that any of the Waksals were selling their ImClone stock. Stewart also reiterated that she spoke to Bacanovie on December 27, that he told her the price of ImClone shares, and that he suggested that she sell her holdings.

The jury did not find Stewart guilty of one false statement specification charged in Count Four: her statement that sometime in November or December of 2001, after she sold ImClone shares held in the Martha Stewart Defined Pension Trust, she and Bacanovie decided she would sell her remaining ImClone shares when they started trading at $60 per share.

The jury found Bacanovie guilty of making one false statement during his January 7 interview with the SEC, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001. This was a specification in Count Two of the Indictment, which charged Bacanovie with falsely stating that he had spoken to Stewart on December 27, that he told Stewart during that conversation that ImClone’s share price had dropped, and that Stewart had instructed him to sell her shares.

The jury found Bacanovie not guilty of the other false statement charged in Count Two: his statement that on December 20, 2001, he had a conversation with Stewart in which she decided to sell her ImClone stock at $60 per share.

The jury also convicted Bacanovie of perjury in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1621, for one statement he made during his February 13 testimony before the SEC. Perjury was the charge in Count Six of the Indictment. Bacanovie stated that on the morning of December 27, he had left a message for Stewart with her assistant, Ann Armstrong. He said that the message requested that Stewart return his call, and advised her of the price at which ImClone was then trading.

The jury acquitted Bacanovie of five other perjury specifications charged in Count Six. These specifications related to conversations Bacanovie had had with Stewart subsequent to her December 27 trade, the circumstances of her decision on December 20 to sell ImClone at $60 per share, and a worksheet he had used during their December 20 conversation.

The jury acquitted Bacanovie of a charge of making and using a false document, which was charged as a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 in Count Five of the Indictment. This count was based on a worksheet that Bacanovie gave the SEC in the course of their investigation. Bacano-vie claimed that he had used the worksheet during his December 20 conversation with Stewart. The worksheet listed Stewart’s holdings and contained numerous handwritten notations in blue ink. The bullet point before ImClone’s entry on the worksheet was circled in blue ink, as were the bullet points preceding several other entries on the page. Beside ImClone’s name was a notation, “@60,” also in blue ink. The “@60” notation was the basis of the charge.

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United States v. Stewart, 323 F. Supp. 2d 606, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12538, 2004 WL 1520527 (S.D.N.Y. 2004).

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