Konstantinos Diamantis, Connecticut’s former deputy budget director, is asking a federal judge to order the 12 jurors who recently convicted him on federal corruption charges back into court so that his defense attorney can question them about whether they read or viewed news coverage about his criminal case before the trial.
Norm Pattis, Diamantis’ defense attorney, filed a motion in court on Wednesday requesting a special hearing and that jurors be recalled to the federal court in Bridgeport.
He cited comments that the jury’s forewoman, Nkong Tankeng, made to members of the media after she and the other jurors convicted Diamantis on 21 counts of bribery, extortion, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators.
Tankeng reportedly told Hearst Connecticut Media that she was not aware of Diamantis before the high-profile criminal trial, but she suggested that other members of the jury had heard of Diamantis before the nine-day trial began.
Pattis relied on that comment to question whether all of the jurors were truthful during the jury selection process.
The 82 potential jurors who were summoned into court in early October were all specifically asked whether they had “heard of Mr. Diamantis or heard anything about this case before you came to court today.” And several of them told U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill that they had.
But Pattis pointed out that only one of the people who served on the jury admitted during the voir dire process to reading press coverage about the years-long criminal investigation into Diamantis, who was accused of steering contracts to school construction companies in return for bribes.
If more than one of the jurors read or viewed media coverage about Diamantis before the trial, Pattis argued, that would call into question the impartiality of the jury.
“(Tankeng’s) remark raises serious questions about whether potential jurors were candid with the court during the brief court-conducted voir dire,” Pattis wrote in his motion.
“The defendant therefore moves for a hearing at which jurors in the case can be asked whether they made a full disclosure of their awareness of press coverage about the case prior to the commencement of evidence and whether they read press coverage during trial,” Pattis added.
There was considerable news coverage of Diamantis and the charges leveled against him before the trial commenced in early October.
And as Pattis pointed out, some of that coverage touched on issues that the jury was barred from learning about during the trial.
For instance, three of the witnesses who testified against Diamantis during the trial had already pleaded guilty to bribing him. But the prosecution was not allowed to mention that at the trial, per the judge’s order.
Diamantis is also facing a second bribery and extortion trial early next year for allegedly pressuring state officials to cancel an audit that was examining a Bristol eye doctor’s billing records. But the jury was intentionally shielded from that information as well.
If some of the jurors learned of that information through media coverage, however, Pattis said it could have impacted the eventual verdict, which went against Diamantis.
“Simple logic suggests that one or more jurors in this case were either exposed to potentially prejudicial pre-trial publicity in this case and failed to disclose it, or that one or more jurors were exposed to potentially prejudicial publicity during trial,” Pattis wrote in his motion.
“The trial court has a responsibility to ensure that he did, in fact, enjoy his right to an impartial jury,” he added.
It will be up to Judge Underhill to decide if the jurors are recalled into court.
If the judge doesn’t agree, Diamantis is expected back in court on Jan. 14, when he will be sentenced.
Andrew Brown is a reporter for the Connecticut Mirror. Copyright 2025 @ CT Mirror (ctmirror.org).