NEWARK – A tedious day of legal wrangling briefly turned riveting this afternoon when, for the first time since his corruption trial began nearly two months ago, Sen. Bob Menendez rose and addressed the court.

Menendez was ordered to his feet by Judge William Walls, who wanted to ask the senator directly about a jury instruction that will let the panel know it should attach no significance to the senator’s refusal to testify in his own defense.

Walls’ question was boilerplate, and the Menendez’s answer a single sentence. Still, they represent the first words the senator has spoken on the record at the trial.

“Defendants Robert Menendez and Salomon Melgen did not testify in this case,” said Walls, reading the words he wanted Menendez’s assent to eventually read to the jurors. “A defendant has an absolute constitutional right not to testify. The burden of proof remains with the prosecution throughout the entire trial.”

Walls continued for several sentences, which will also tell jurors to “not consider for any reason at all” why Menendez and Melgen did not testify.

“Do you wish the jury to be so charged, senator?” Walls asked.

“Yes, Your Honor, I will,” Menendez said.

Walls read the same instruction to Melgen, also on his feet at the defense table.

“Do you wish the jury to be so charged, doctor?”

“Yes, your Honor,” said Melgen, likewise speaking his first words of the trial.

Walls volunteered to create the jury instruction, drawing upon his time on the bench in Essex County as a Superior Court judge. He chose to ask both defendants directly, rather than through their lawyers, if they wanted their invocation of the right not to testify to be highlighted for the jury.

“Some defendants eventually did not want that instruction to the jury,” he said of his time on the Superior Court bench. “For whatever reason.”

Walls and the various attorneys in the case have spent the day discussing the numerous instructions that will be read to jurors before they hear closing arguments. Discussions and negotiation about the document, which in draft form already runs more than 60 pages, are set to continue in open court outside the presence of the jury through the afternoon.