The trial of the previous CEO of the defunct crypto change FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), is quick approaching the decision stage because the prosecution closed its case final week. Following this, Bankman-Fried and his legal professionals are set to open their protection (or perhaps not) this week in what might show very pivotal as to the course of the case and SBF’s destiny.
What Will Sam Bankman-Fried’s Legal professionals Do?
Particularly, SBF’s trial will proceed on October 26, when he and his legal professionals might want to inform the courtroom on what step they intend to take subsequent. As to the subsequent steps they’ll take, they’ll both select to open a protection and current witnesses and proof to the jury. They will additionally select to waive the case and never put up any protection.
They’ll most certainly must put up a protection, contemplating that the prosecution (after 3 weeks of calling virtually twenty witnesses) can arguably be mentioned to have discharged the burden of proving SBF’s guilt past affordable doubt. As such, will probably be an enormous gamble for the protection to easily waive the case and ask the jury to present a verdict solely on the proof adduced by the prosecution.
Assuming they resolve to open a protection, there is no such thing as a doubt that they may constrained within the witnesses and proof they’ll put ahead. Concerning witnesses, the protection is already handicapped as Choose Kaplan already excluded the seven skilled witnesses that it had proposed to name. He acknowledged that their testimonies had been both irrelevant or might confuse the jury.
At this level, it is usually unlikely that the protection can get anybody who had shut ties to the happenings at FTX to testify of their favor, because the prosecution appears to have exhausted all these witnesses. Nothing appears to be going within the protection’s favor, and it’s comprehensible because the prosecution has been in charge of this case from the get-go.
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FTX Founder’s Legal professionals Can No Longer Play It Secure
Of their amended proposed request to cost, SBF’s legal professionals requested the jury to “study and consider” SBF’s testimony (if relevant) similar to they’d for the testimony of different witnesses. This request could be very vital, particularly if the protection decides to take a raffle by permitting Bankman-Fried to take the stand, which many would argue that they need to.
The percentages should not of their favor, and the legal professionals in all probability realize it. So as to have any probability of fixing the narrative, they may have to name the one one that had first-hand information of every thing that occurred from the start, and that individual occurs to be Sam Bankman-Fried.
It’s undoubtedly an enormous gamble, but it surely looks as if the one possibility they’ve at this level as, barring any flip of occasions throughout cross-examination, Bankman-Fried might assist paint an image that means that he’s not the villain that his former associates have made him out to be.
If SBF takes the stand, the jury should get rid of any type of bias and study his testimony as that of an harmless man who is solely making an attempt to make a case for himself and never one who’s ‘mendacity’ to save lots of face.
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