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Sam Bankman-Fried will take the stand at his own trial, his authorized counsel has confirmed. The founding father of stricken crypto alternate FTX has endured three weeks of bruising testimony in federal court docket from ex-colleagues, friends, and different witnesses. However Bankman-Fried will now take the chance to relay his personal model of occasions to the jury.
The US authorities has accused Bankman-Fried of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud, whereby funds belonging to FTX clients had been swept right into a sibling firm, Alameda Analysis, and both used to again up dangerous crypto bets or spent on debt repayments, private loans, political donations, and luxuries of assorted types. At trial, he’s dealing with seven expenses in reference to the alleged fraud.
In deciding whether or not to testify, the stakes for Bankman-Fried are excessive. “The upside,” says Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Regulation Faculty and former federal prosecutor, “is that you simply actually get to have a chance to persuasively give your aspect of the story.” However testifying may even expose Bankman-Fried to variables outdoors his management, together with cross-examination by the prosecution.
The default recommendation to any legal defendant, says Christopher LaVigne, a companion at regulation agency Withers, is to not take the stand. In a court docket setting, irrespective of how effectively ready the testimony, it’s “nearly not possible to foretell what’s going to occur, significantly in cross-examination.” Bankman-Fried could also be “caught flat-footed,” says LaVigne, by a bit of proof that undermines his telling of occasions—and if the federal government can show he has lied on the stand, it may be used as ammunition within the remaining levels of the trial. Within the occasion he’s convicted, in the meantime, the decide would take into consideration any perjury in sentencing.
To an extent, nonetheless, Bankman-Fried was left with little alternative however to defy typical knowledge and take the stand. The load of the proof laid out by cooperating witnesses, every of whom spoke to their very own guilt, means a Hail Mary strategy is the one possibility the protection has left, says Daniel Silva, a former prosecutor and lawyer at regulation agency Buchalter. “It doesn’t look like he has some other playing cards to play. It’s high-risk, and probably very minimal reward,” says Silva. “It looks as if there’s actually nothing else for him to do at this level than testify and attempt to clarify it away.”
In direct examination, the protection is prone to ask Bankman-Fried to supply various explanations for the behaviors outlined within the testimony of his former colleagues, and maybe handle questions round his intentions and frame of mind. “He’s going to should current himself as probably the most misunderstood man in America,” says Richman.
On the morning of October 26, the prosecution will name its remaining witness, then relaxation its case. The protection will then name 4 witnesses of its personal, considered one of them Bankman-Fried. However till he takes the stand, there may be at all times the opportunity of an about-turn. Regardless of having acknowledged his intention to testify, says Rachel Maimin, companion at regulation agency Lowenstein Sandler, Bankman-Fried remains to be inside his rights to withdraw, ought to he get chilly ft. The choice to testify, says Maimin, can “activate a dime.”
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