A federal judge in U.S. District Court in New Haven agreed Friday to delay the start of the upcoming trial of five former utility cooperative defendants facing corruption charges and will consider a motion by the defendants either to move the trial venue or at least exclude the cooperative’s utility customers from the jury pool.

Jury selection originally had been set to begin Feb. 6 in the federal indictments handed down Nov. 8, 2018 against five former Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative officials: former Chief Executive Offcer Drew Rankin, former Chief Financial Officer Edward Pryor, former Norwich Public Utilities General Manager John Bilda, former CMEEC board Chairman James Sullivan of Norwich and former board member Edward DeMuzzio of Groton.

Each faces three charges of conspiracy and theft from a program receiving federal funds for their roles in planning trips to the Kentucky Derby and a West Virginia golf resort. Rankin and Sullivan face the same charges in a second indictment alleging that CMEEC paid for nearly $100,000 in personal expenses for Sullivan.

All five defendants have been offered undisclosed plea deals in exchange for guilty pleas, but are gearing up their defense. They intend to call an expert witness to testify on their behalf at trial and to issue subpoenas for extensive documents from CMEEC, according to a court filing.

CMEEC is paying for attorneys for all five defendants under the agency’s bylaws, which call for indemnification of cooperative officers and directors. CMEEC has filed suit against its insurance company for refusing to cover the expenses through the policy in place at the time.

During an hourlong hearing Friday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer ordered a continuance and asked attorneys for both parties to propose a new schedule. He allowed up to 30 days to resolve disputes over the massive volume of documents being used in the case and canceled a pretrial conference scheduled for Jan. 31. Meyer asked attorneys to provide a status update by Jan. 24 with proposed jury dates and related pretrial scheduling dates.

Separately, attorney Thomas J. Murphy filed a motion Thursday on behalf of the defendants and co-signed by their attorneys, asking that jury selection exclude any electric customers of CMEEC’s six member utilities — Norwich Public Utilities, Groton Utilities, Bozrah Light & Power, Jewett City Department of Public Utilities, South Norwalk Electric and Water and the Third Taxing District of Norwalk.

The motion cited the government’s argument that CMEEC customers would be the alleged “victims” in the government’s argument that approximately $1.2 million in funds designated as rate stabilization revenues for the member utilities were diverted to pay for the lavish trips for dozens of top CMEEC staff, board members, their spouses and other family members and invited guests.

Alternately, the motion stated, the upcoming trial could be moved from New Haven to Hartford, “as it is the only location in the District that does not draw venirepersons (potential jurors) from geographic areas served by CMEEC,” the motion stated.

The motion cited extensive press coverage in the New London County area, where most of CMEEC’s customers live and where more than 300 newsstories "highly negative to these defendants" have been published regarding “the subject matter of this prosecution.”

Meyer did not rule on the motion, but suggested that if the trial stayed in New Haven, potential jurors who are CMEEC customers could be excluded from a jury pool. He asked federal prosecutors to file their response to the motion by Jan. 24.

Meyer heard arguments on several motions by both the defendants and federal prosecutors, including a claim by prosecutors that CMEEC failed to provide all relevant documents requested in the initial investigative subpoena submitted in October 2016 and a subsequent subpoena the following spring.

Sarah P. Karwan, lead federal prosecutor, told Meyer that the government learned in December 2018 that there were another 1,700 additional documents in CMEEC’s possession she said should have been submitted in response to the criminal investigation subpoenas. In December, Rankin and Pryor submitted a request to CMEEC for emails and documents produced during the four years in question, and Karwan said the government learned of the additional documents through that request.

She said CMEEC never submitted a privilege log report to investigators revealing that there were additional documents being withheld due to attorney-client privilege. Karwan argued the additional documents could have important relevance in the upcoming trial, and the government needs to know their content prior to the start of the trial.

“We’re in the dark as to what’s in those documents,” Karwan said.

In a separate dispute, the five defendants complained to Meyer that their request for the 75,000 documents containing 350,000 pages that the government has used to develop its criminal case has not been properly granted. Attorney Tony Miodonka said the computer hard drives provided by the government were not indexed, could not be searched and amounted to a box full of unsorted documents.

“It’s a mess, your honor,” Miodonka said.

Karwan countered that the information was provided in the same format that CMEEC provided it to the government. She pointed out that the documents were created during a period when four of the five defendants either worked for CMEEC or served on the board and were “in control of CMEEC.”

Attorney Joe Martini, representing CMEEC at Friday’s hearing, first objected to the claim that the cooperative’s documents were “a mess,” saying they were produced and kept in standard formats. Martini told Judge Meyer that CMEEC will be able to provide the documents in readable formats. He also said CMEEC will respond to the government’s claim that some subpoenaed documents were withheld.

Meyer ordered that CMEEC produce all the materials by Feb. 3 and produce a privilege log report by Jan. 13 describing why each document was withheld from the subpoena request, or alternatively, to provide the documents.

c.bessette@theday.com