NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Jurors ended a second day of deliberations in the Martha Stewart trial without reaching a verdict Thursday but appeared to be focusing a charge of perjury against Stewart's former broker, Peter Bacanovic.
The jurors sent a note to the judge Thursday afternoon, asking about what was needed to convict Bacanovic on a charge of perjury. They wanted to know if the testimony of a witness and a document produced by the same witness were separate pieces of evidence.
"I think the short answer is, yes," Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum responded.
The start of deliberations was postponed Thursday morning because four jurors were delayed by a subway accident.
After starting an hour late, the jury asked for testimony from an SEC investigator concerning interviews with Bacanovic.
Then after lunch they sent another note to the judge, asking for e-mails between Bacanovic and Stewart and Stewart's business manager and later, for the standards of evidence needed to convict on Count 6, the perjury charge against Bacanovic.
The panel of eight women and four men began weighing the evidence Wednesday afternoon as they sought to determine if Stewart and her ex-broker lied about her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. stock in late 2001.
The jurors then asked for testimony from the government's star witness, Bacanovic's ex-assistant, Douglas Faneuil, about phone calls with his boss and Stewart on Dec. 27, 2001, the date of the ImClone sale.
Close to the end of the day, the jury asked to see the worksheet on which Bacanovic noted "60" next to ImClone's stock symbol, as well as phone records from Stewart's assistant and transcripts of some of the interviews Bacanovic had with the SEC.
Stewart's lead attorney Robert Morvillo declined to speculate on an expected timeframe for the jury's decision, calling the process "a crap shoot at this point."
"You can't read anything into the early notes," he told CNNfn.
The jurors received the obstruction of justice case after Judge Cedarbaum instructed them for one hour and 40 minutes Wednesday morning.
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Her comments were basic, telling the 12 jurors that they alone will decide the defendants' fate and praising them for performing their civic duty. She pointed out that guilt and innocence are personal and not collective. "You may find one defendant guilty without finding the other defendant guilty," she said.
"There is no magic formula by which you should evaluate testimony," the judge told the jurors after detailing instructions for each of the eight remaining counts in the case. "In your everyday affairs, you determine the reliability of statements. The same test should apply."
Stewart and Bacanovic are charged with lying to investigators about the circumstances surrounding Stewart's stock sale on Dec. 27, 2001, the day before regulators rejected the company's application for ImClone's experimental cancer drug -- news that sent its stock tumbling. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Last week, Judge Cedarbaum dismissed a securities fraud charge against the 62-year-old Stewart. The four remaining charges she faces, and the five faced by Bacanovic, each carry a sentence of up to five years.
The prosecution alleges Stewart sold her ImClone stock only after Bacanovic told Faneuil to tip her off that ImClone founder Sam Waksal was trying to sell.
Stewart and Bacanovic have told investigators they had an arrangement to sell once the stock fell to $60.
Bacanovic was broker to both Stewart and Waksal, who is serving a seven-year prison term after pleading guilty to securities fraud over his family's sale of ImClone shares.
-- from CNNfn's Allan Chernoff and staff and wire reports
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