FTX founder and onetime CEO Sam Bankman-Fried will stand trial in just under two weeks to defend himself against allegations he deliberately committed fraud and conspired to defraud crypto investors and customers in FTX and Alameda Research.
The estimated six-week trial itself is scheduled to kick off on Oct. 3, 2023, a mere 10 months after Bankman-Fried was first arrested and not even 11 months after FTX collapsed.
To better understand the trial process, CoinDesk spoke to several legal experts, some of whom asked for anonymity to discuss a high-profile case.
Jury selection
Though the trial is scheduled to begin next month, there's still some time before the actual arguments are made. The first step, which may occur as soon as next week, is a final pretrial conference where Southern District of New York Judge Lewis Kaplan will lay out what a final witness schedule may look like, how long the trial date may be and rule on any final outstanding motions. Judge Kaplan may also entertain a few motions after the jury is selected, said Martin Auerbach, an attorney at law firm Withersworldwide.
The second step is voir dire, which is what will actually begin on Oct. 3.
The jury selection process will see the judge ask potential jurors a number of questions. He will likely start broad, asking if any potential jurors have travel planned within the next few weeks or might otherwise be unable to disappear from their jobs for weeks, one of the legal experts – an attorney with experience in white collar litigation – told CoinDesk.
Reasonable doubt
The DOJ must prove guilt ”beyond a reasonable doubt”, given that this is a criminal trial. By contrast, in a civil case, there is a lower, “preponderance of evidence” standard.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt, there's no specific percentage but you can think of that as 90+%,” one of the legal experts told CoinDesk. “You have a deep and abiding conviction in the guilt of the defendant.”
The assistant U.S. attorneys trying the case will likely demonstrate each element of each of the charges and illustrate what evidence they have that would support a conviction for each charge, they said.
“They’re tracking each piece of testimony, each document to make sure that they’ve got enough in the record to withstand,” they said. “[Bankman-Fried] will inevitably argue – because every defendant argues after trial – [that] they fell short on this element or another.”
Once the prosecution rests, the defense will have its own opportunity to present additional witnesses. One outstanding question is whether or not Bankman-Fried himself will testify in his own defense.
Read the full story here.
Logistics notes
Judge Lewis Kaplan has signed off on the DOJ's request to treat Friday, Oct. 6 as a trial date. Monday, Oct. 9 is Columbus Day (or Indigenous Peoples' Day), and therefore a holiday.
— Nikhilesh De, Edited by Nick Baker, Marc Hochstein
