Almost from the moment opening statements began in the federal corruption trial of former V.I. Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal and former V.I. Police Commissioner Ray Martinez Thursday morning, the two defendants tried to distance themselves from one another.
Martinez’s attorneys, Miguel Oppenheimer and Juan Matos de Juan, reserved their right to respond to federal prosecutors’ opening statements. O’Neal’s attorney, Dale Lionel Smith, told jurors they shouldn’t assume his client was part of Martinez and David Whitaker’s alleged conspiracy just because the two were on trial together. Whitaker, a former V.I. government contractor who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal investigators, is seemingly central to the government’s case.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “You are to give separate consideration to each defendant.”
Smith noted that while both face charges of honest services wire fraud, bribery concerning a federally funded program, and money laundering conspiracy, only Martinez had been charged with two counts of obstructing justice. Smith went on to claim that Whitaker and Martinez never brought O’Neal in on the scheme.
“As you hear them covering the crime, you won’t hear them say, ‘let’s get Jenifer to cover up this crime,’” he said. “Because she didn’t commit any crime.”
After the parties’ opening statements, Martinez’s attorneys made a last-ditch attempt to sever his charges from O’Neal’s, claiming her attorney only shared her theory of defense on the three shared charges during oral arguments.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kearney denied the motion hours later as “untimely without good cause and otherwise unfounded given the nature of the references in Defendant O’Neal’s non-evidentiary opening statement suggesting she played no role in conduct possibly involving other persons….”
The day’s opening statements began with Assistant U.S. Attorney Cherrisse Amaro, who gave jurors a road map of the government’s case against the two former members of Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.’s cabinet. Amaro called them classic examples of “public officials who put themselves first — who used their power and positions to enrich themselves.”
Martinez, she told the jury, reaped more than a hundred thousand dollars in kickbacks from David Whitaker, a former V.I. government contractor whose history of cooperating with the federal government is almost as long as his criminal history, before helping Whitaker land a $1.4 million surveillance camera contract financed with American Rescue Plan Act funds. Whitaker pleaded guilty last year to two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery — charges which stemmed from the same federal investigation into Martinez and O’Neal.
Amaro said O’Neal, who “controlled the flow” of federal dollars through the territory, was as powerful a person.
“And therefore an exceptionally dangerous one, when she chose to abuse that power,” she said.
The bulk of Thursday’s hearing was taken up by prosecutors’ subsequent questioning of Whitaker, who took the stand shortly before noon. Over the next several hours, Alexandre Dempsey, a trial attorney with the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, questioned Whitaker over his dealings with the defendants and presented jurors with dozens of bank statements, invoices, phone recordings and text conversations.
Whitaker explained that his company, Mon Ethos Pro Support, initially performed work for VIPD without a contract but that payments were routinely late. Whitaker said that he was the first person to suggest offering Martinez gifts — largely, at first, in the form of payments for kitchen equipment for Martinez’s then-nascent restaurant, Don Felito’s Cookshop on St. Thomas. At one point, Dempsey asked Whitaker why he made the initial offer.
“So that he would stop working on his restaurant during work hours and pay my invoices,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker testified that he eventually became concerned about the arrangement “because I was providing the police commissioner … money for his restaurant and that it would be seen as bribery.” Whitaker later said he started cooperating with federal investigators after they approached him about a separate crime in September 2023.
On Thursday, Whitaker outlined tens of thousands of dollars in payments to Martinez, which included covering tuition for Martinez’s kids’ private school, rent, and restaurant construction costs. The two took three trips to Boston — flying first-class — and stayed in a lavish two-bedroom suite at the Encore Boston Harbor, where they spent thousands on food and entertainment. Though Whitaker testified that he paid for those trips, many of the related charges first appeared on credit card statements for O’Neal’s son, Jafari Daniel, whom Whitaker said worked for Mon Ethos.
Whitaker said he reimbursed Daniel, who benefited “from the miles.”
Dempsey later introduced recordings of phone conversations during which Whitaker and Martinez allegedly discussed inflating Mon Ethos invoices to cover Martinez’s restaurant and tuition expenses.
Whitaker’s testimony came after prosecutors called V.I. Property and Procurement Commissioner Lisa Alejandro to testify. Alejandro outlined the territory’s procurement processes and laws and maintained that if she had known a government official was being paid by a prospective contractor, she never would have authorized the contract, “because it’s against all federal and local laws.”
“It’s a crime,” she said.
