MARTHA STEWART Juror is at center of bid for new trial

Stewart's lawyer said he would have kept the man off the jury.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Martha Stewart says she should be tried again because one of the jurors who convicted her last month didn't fully come clean about his background, including a 1997 arrest for assault.
Stewart lawyer Robert Morvillo claims he would have tried to keep juror Chappell Hartridge off the panel had he known about the arrest, and about accusations he stole money from a Bronx Little League organization.
He also claims Hartridge's post-trial comments -- including saying the verdict was a win for "the little guy" demonstrate a clear bias that robbed the domestic maven of a fair trial.
"Ms. Stewart's conviction cannot stand," Morvillo wrote in papers filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
Stewart was convicted March 5 of lying to federal investigators about her sale of 3,298 shares of ImClone Systems stock on Dec. 27, 2001, just before it plunged on a negative government report. She is to be sentenced June 17. Legal experts believe she will receive a sentence of 10 to 16 months in prison for the four guilty counts -- obstructing justice, conspiracy and two counts of making false statements.
Perjury?
But the Stewart papers claim Hartridge may have committed perjury by lying on important parts of the questionnaire he filled out before he was selected for the jury.
Morvillo said Hartridge was arrested and spent several days in jail in 1997 after the woman with whom he was living accused him of threatening to kill her and throwing her into a statue of an elephant in her apartment.
The woman was badly bruised but declined to press charges because she could not miss work to appear in court, the filing said. Included was an affidavit from the woman, who said Hartridge was "occasionally physically abusive" to her during the four months they lived together.
Hartridge could not be reached Wednesday to comment.
Sued three times
The juror also failed to disclose on his jury questionnaire that he had been sued three times, the filing said. The papers said civil judgments had been entered against him in each case. Among many other questions, potential jurors were asked whether they had been in court before, been sued or been accused of any crime.
The Stewart team sought a new trial under a 1984 Supreme Court case that said convicts can seek new trials if they show a juror lied in jury selection and that the truth would have provided a basis to remove that juror.
Hartridge's questionnaire remains under seal. U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who barred reporters from the jury selection process, has declined to release questionnaires.
Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for the federal prosecutors who brought the case against the domestic entrepreneur, said: "We are reviewing the motion and will respond at the appropriate time."