NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors have sufficient evidence to decide whether Martha Stewart's former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, committed perjury, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The testimony of Stewart's assistant, Ann Armstrong, and a telephone message log she kept are enough to meet the high standards of evidence to convict a defendant of perjury, U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum said.

Bacanovic is accused of lying under oath about a message he left for Stewart on Dec. 27, 2001, the day she sold ImClone Systems stock.

Bacanovic told the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2002 that the message simply relayed ImClone's stock price. But Stewart's assistant recorded the message as: "Peter Bacanovic thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward."

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To convict a defendant of perjury, jurors must rely on the testimony of two witness or on one witness whose story is supported by a document.

The jury asked Cedarbaum whether it was enough to use Armstrong's testimony, plus the message log that Armstrong created. "I think the short answer is yes," the judge told lawyers Thursday.

But she did not answer the jury immediately. She gave the government and Bacanovic's defense team time to submit arguments on the matter.

Cedarbaum ruled that Armstrong's testimony and her telephone message log can be counted as two items.

"The witness had an independent recollection, apart from the log," the judge said.

A focus on Bacanovic in the jury's notes shows only that they are considering the charges against him -- not which way the jury may be leaning.

And it by no means indicates they are focusing more on him than on the counts against Stewart, who is charged with lying to investigators about her ImClone sale on Dec. 27, 2001.

Stewart and Bacanovic say they had agreed earlier to sell the stock when its price fell below $60 per share.

The ruling Friday does not mean jurors are certain to convict Bacanovic. They still must decide on other legal questions, including whether Bacanovic intentionally gave false testimony about the message.

Bacanovic lawyer Richard Strassberg strongly objected to the ruling, saying she was essentially allowing jurors to reach a perjury conviction based on one witness' testimony.