The U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) has efficiently gained a movement to forestall Sam Bankman-Fried’s proposed skilled witnesses from testifying within the upcoming FTX trial.
A brand new court docket submitting reveals that Bankman-Fried’s proposed witnesses both failed to satisfy the requirements of with the ability to testify or had been excluded as a result of authorities’s request.
Within the doc, the DOJ gained a movement to exclude testimony from regulation professor and former Federal Election Fee Chairperson Bradley Smith, saying that his testimony goals to instruct the jury on problems with the regulation or is irrelevant.
The federal government additional gained a movement to exclude Lawrence Akka, a British lawyer, from testifying as his testimony would come with commentary on FTX’s phrases of service. In line with the regulation, specialists could not provide “authorized opinions as to the meanings of contract phrases at concern.”
One other witness denied by the court docket as a result of prosecution’s request was Dr. Peter U. Vinella, a monetary trade marketing consultant. He was denied as a result of he would solely present background info which was discovered to have “restricted to no bearing on the problems on this case” and will doubtlessly mislead the jury.
Moreover, among the protection groups’ proposed witnesses didn’t dwell as much as the requirements of being admitted and had been rejected. These embody information analytics and forensics skilled Brian Kim, Andrew Di Wu, an assistant professor on the College of Michigan, and Thomas Bishop, who works for a consulting agency.
Nonetheless, the choose stated that it could be attainable for the protection to name Bishop and Kim to rebuttal the testimony of Peter Eason, a particular agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Bankman-Fried is accused of defrauding traders and mishandling billions of {dollars} price of buyer funds. His trial is about to start in October of this yr. If convicted, he faces a long time behind bars.
Final week, prosecutors made objections to Bankman-Fried’s lawyer’s proposed questions for potential jurors. Bankman-Fried’s dad and mom are additionally being sued by FTX over alleged misallocation of funds.
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