Lawyers for New Jersey’s former Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, have said that even fewer years would be tantamount to a death sentence.

Prosecutors say former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez should be imprisoned for 15 years for a “grave abuse of his power,” after the New Jersey Democrat became the first person to be convicted of abusing a Senate committee leadership position and the first U.

Menendez’s conduct may be the most serious for which a U.S. senator has been convicted in the history of the Republic,” prosecutors wrote in their submission to the judge.