The United States has until Aug. 3 to respond to Jenifer O’Neal’s motion for release pending her appeal of her public corruption conviction, according to an order the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued Friday.
O’Neal, the former Office of Management and Budget director, was sentenced June 11 to seven years in prison after she and former VIPD commissioner Ray Martinez were found guilty of bribery, wire fraud and money laundering at a jury trial in December. Both have appealed their convictions.
On Monday O’Neal, represented by Joseph A. DiRuzzo III, filed a motion for release pending appeal, noting that she is not a flight risk or a danger to the community, and that the court recently granted release pending appeal to another former Virgin Islands official.
That was a reference to Darin Richardson, the former V.I. Housing and Finance Authority chief operating officer who was convicted last year on multiple counts related to his handling of a federally funded disaster recovery contract and a home construction loan and sentenced in March to three years in prison. The Third Circuit granted his motion for release pending appeal on June 30.
O’Neal, 54, is currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, after U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney denied her motion to remain free on bail pending her appeal June 30 — the same day the Third Circuit granted Richardson’s release — and she surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service on July 1.
“The parties do not dispute Ms. O’Neal is not likely to flee or pose a danger to the safety of another person or the community,” Kearney wrote in a footnote appended to his order denying her bail. “We focus on whether she has shown her appeal raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal, a new trial, a sentence not including imprisonment, or a reduced sentence shorter than the time already served plus the expected duration of her appeal. She has not. And she largely concedes she cannot meet her burden during today’s oral argument.”
According to her 23-page motion for release before the Third Circuit, O’Neal’s “appeal is not for delay. Under the governing standard she need not show that she will win; she need show only that her appeal presents a question that is ‘significant’ and ‘fairly debatable’ and that, if decided her way, requires reversal or a new trial. She meets that standard several times over.”
The motion asserts that O’Neal’s “substantial questions” of law around her trial “would vacate not one count but all four, and she is serving an eighty-four-month term that rests entirely on convictions her appeal may set aside in full. If ordinary appellate timing is allowed to run, she will serve years of a sentence whose lawfulness this Court has not yet reviewed, on questions the District Court itself conceded are unresolved. That is the injustice Section 3143(b) exists to prevent,” it states, referring to Title 18 of the U.S. Code concerning release or detention pending appeal.
The motion concludes that the court “should grant the motion and order Ms. O’Neal released on appropriate conditions, including the home-detention conditions she observed without violation for more than eighteen months, pending the disposition of her appeal. In the alternative, Ms. O’Neal requests expedited consideration, because she is serving a sentence that rests on convictions her appeal may vacate in full.”
O’Neal’s codefendant Martinez, 57, who is currently incarcerated at MDC Guaynabo, has also appealed his conviction and 10-year sentence to the Third Circuit but has not made a motion for release, according to available court filings.
