The judge who sentenced Andrea Sneiderman to prison has denied her bid for a new trial, ruling Tuesday that the evidence brought against the Dunwoody widow was “more than sufficient” to uphold her conviction.
Sneiderman was found guilty of providing false statements and hindering the apprehension of a criminal after she testified that she did not have an affair with her husband’s killer, Hemy Neuman. Her attorney Brian Steel, said at a hearing earlier this month that her testimony, true or not, was not material to the conviction of Neuman, who’s serving a life sentence for fatally shooting Rusty Sneiderman in the parking lot of his son’s nursery.
“Contrary to (Sneiderman’s) argument, the state is not required to tender the entirety of the previous trial transcript or record to adequately determine whether defendant’s false statements were material,” DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Gregory Adams wrote in his ruling.
Steel had attacked what he called the prosecution’s “hypocrisy” in a failed attempt to introduce a brief related to Neuman’s appeal, recently heard by the state Supreme Court. In it, the state acknowledged that Sneiderman’s “alleged perjured testimony was not essential to the verdict rendered in Mr. Neuman’s trial.”
“The prosecution is arguing on one hand that Ms. Sneiderman’s testimony at the Neuman trial did not affect, was not material or critical to the verdict, and on the other hand the prosecutor is saying in Ms. Sneiderman’s trial oh, her testimony, allegedly false, was critical material,” Steel argued at the hearing earlier this month.
Neuman’s defense had likewise failed to prove that Sneiderman’s perjured testimony was “essential to the guilty verdict in light of the overwhelming evidence of Neuman’s guilt,” Adams said in his latest ruling.
Sneiderman was released from prison last June and is on parole through August 2017. Because the mother of two was sentenced under the First Offender Act, her nine felony convictions will be erased, assuming she does not commit another crime.
Check myajc.com later today and Wednesday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution for additional information about Judge Adams’ ruling.
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