ST. CROIX — An attorney representing Jenifer O’Neal, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget convicted alongside former Police Commissioner Ray Martinez on federal corruption charges, has filed a legal brief in District Court arguing her conviction should be overturned or that she deserves a new trial.
Attorney Dale Lionel Smith, who represents O’Neal, submitted a memorandum of law in support of his client’s motions on Tuesday, laying out several arguments for why District Judge Mark Kearney should grant either a judgment of acquittal or a new trial.
O’Neal initially filed motions for judgment of acquittal and for a new trial on December 24, 2025. On March 31, Smith requested more time to file the supporting brief. The court approved the request, setting Tuesday as the deadline.
O’Neal was convicted on counts of honest services wire fraud, federal program bribery, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Her attorney argues all those convictions rise and fall on the bribery charge — and that the government simply did not prove it.
To convict someone of bribery, prosecutors must show that something of value was given in exchange for an official act — a specific quid pro quo. Here, the “something of value” was a security deposit paid on O’Neal’s behalf for a commercial lease. Smith argues the payment was never tied to any official act O’Neal agreed to perform.
The brief points to the government’s own cooperating witness, David Whitaker, to make the point. When Whitaker approached O’Neal about a separate contract not under investigation by the FBI — to clean up a server room at OMB — he explicitly offered her something in exchange for awarding the contract. That, the defense says, looked like a textbook bribe attempt. But when the security deposit came up, no such exchange was proposed. Instead, co-defendant Martinez told O’Neal he wanted to give her the money as a gift from a friend.
Adding to the defense’s argument is the timeline. According to the filing, the FBI began investigating Whitaker and Martinez for bribery in early 2023. When agents escalated to a formal criminal investigation that August, O’Neal was not part of it. When Whitaker began cooperating with the FBI in September 2023, agents specifically told him not to approach O’Neal in an effort to draw her into a crime she was not already suspected of committing.
Smith argues the security deposit is better understood as a gratuity — something given after the fact out of goodwill — rather than a bribe, which requires a corrupt agreement made in advance. He cites a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Snyder v. United States, decided in 2024, which drew a sharp distinction between the two.
The defense also challenges the wire fraud count tied to the electronic transfer of funds. Smith argues O’Neal could not have foreseen that a wire transfer would be used, because Martinez had specifically asked to pay in cash — not to hide a bribe, but to avoid having to explain to his wife why he was wiring $10,000 to $15,000 to a female friend.
The brief also argues that O’Neal never should have been tried alongside Martinez. Smith contends the evidence against Martinez was dramatically stronger than the case against O’Neal, and that trying them together before the same jury made it nearly impossible for jurors to evaluate her case on its own merits.
The indictment charged O’Neal as part of a fraud scheme that allegedly began in November 2022. But the defense notes that neither the FBI’s case agent nor Whitaker testified that O’Neal was aware of or involved in the scheme that early. The defense contends that the government’s evidence at trial focused almost entirely on events that occurred after Whitaker began cooperating — suggesting that the government strategically joined O’Neal to Martinez’s much stronger case to improve its odds of conviction.
The brief also notes that the jury reached verdicts for both defendants at roughly the same time, raising questions about whether O’Neal’s case received the independent scrutiny it deserved.
Smith argues the court should have granted a severance — separating the two defendants into different trials — and that it still has the power to remedy that by ordering a new trial for O’Neal alone.
Martinez has filed his own renewed motion for acquittal, arguing the prosecution relied too heavily on Whitaker, whose credibility he describes as deeply compromised.
READ MORE: Ray Martinez files renewed motion for acquittal; Jenifer O’Neal gets extension for supporting brief
O’Neal and Martinez were both convicted on December 11, 2025, and are scheduled to be sentenced in June. Kearney will decide whether to grant acquittal, allow the verdict to stand, or order a new trial.
