Through the homicide trial in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, when prosecutors decry the vacancy of Meursault’s soul, the emotionally stunted defendant says the proceedings have denied him “the best to indicate any feeling or goodwill” to the jurors deciding his destiny.
And, because the case towards Sam Bankman-Fried reached its conclusion final month, the 31-year-old former crypto wunderkind — who had watched for weeks as three of his closest associates and colleagues painted him as a conniving fraudster — probably felt equally disadvantaged.
Like Meursault, Bankman-Fried had taken the choice to testify in his personal defence, virtually definitely towards the recommendation of his lead lawyer Mark Cohen. Additionally like Meursault, he did so to no avail.
What could have labored in Silicon Valley and on Capitol Hill, the place the MIT graduate’s “maths nerd” mumblecore act as soon as performed to rave evaluations, fell disastrously flat within the austere, mahogany-panelled New York courtroom.
Throughout hours of gruelling questions, Bankman-Fried claimed to not recall essential occasions or petulantly refused to supply binary responses to easy queries. To the white-collar prison defence bar, this underlined the truth that exposing a consumer to cross-examination is sort of by no means a bet price taking.
If the intention was to win over the three males and 9 girls who made up the jury in Decrease Manhattan, it backfired spectacularly: a responsible verdict on all counts was returned after simply over 4 hours of deliberation.
There may be, in fact, little to counsel that Bankman-Fried stood an opportunity of being exonerated, even when he had stored his counsel.
“I don’t assume the outcomes would have been any totally different, had he stayed off the witness stand,” says Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor who’s now affiliate professor of regulation at Fordham College.
“The prosecution had already introduced extraordinarily damning proof. They’d testimony, texts, emails supporting that testimony of lengthy, reflective conversations between Bankman-Fried and his closest associates.”
But, as Cohen had tried to get the courtroom to acknowledge, within the days main as much as the trial, Bankman-Fried was at a drawback from the very begin.
For all of the authorized accoutrements that adorn US prison circumstances, a defendant’s testimony is commonly a high-stakes reputation contest performed out in entrance of 12 atypical People. That, says Bader, is the lesson bolstered by the FTX case. “Like a whole lot of life, in case you are charismatic and a extra engaging individual, and [you are] seen as extra credible and likeable, that yields rewards,” she notes.
Tom Barrack — the true property investor and early monetary backer of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential run — was acquitted final November of unlawful lobbying costs after he managed to painting himself as being aghast on the former president’s demagoguery, and as an atypical citizen with political considerations.
A yr earlier, white teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was discovered not-guilty of killing two males in Kenosha, Wisconsin, having convulsed with tears on the witness stand, throughout testimony by which he stated he was performing in self-defence after travelling armed to the city, to counter-protesters within the wake of police capturing a black man.
Bankman-Fried was not in a position to enchantment in both means, even when his life was on the road. The writer Michael Lewis’s evaluation of the entrepreneur with whom he spent many hours each earlier than and after the collapse of FTX was that “different folks felt feelings; he didn’t”.
Caroline Ellison, the FTX founder’s former girlfriend, had testified that Bankman-Fried “thought that the one ethical rule that mattered was doing no matter would maximise utility”.
These impressions weren’t shifted by Bankman-Fried’s matter-of-fact confession that relationships, normally, weren’t one thing he had “been nice at”. Regret was not on the playing cards.
Nonetheless, Choose Lewis Kaplan had denied a request by the defence for the panel to be informed that the previous billionaire lives with attention-deficit hyperactivity dysfunction, which impacts his “physique language, or eye contact”.
Bankman-Fried, who fidgets and appears away when answering questions, is famend for having performed video video games throughout TV interviews for FTX. He was on prescription amphetamines at some stage in the trial to handle his ADHD signs.
However even a jury made conscious of this could not have gotten an perception into Bankman-Fried’s “Robinhood” defence — which he tried to hawk in media appearances earlier than and after his indictment final December.
Little doubt cautious of being cross-examined on the subject, Bankman-Fried provided no proof of his purported motive for looking for to shortly make billions of {dollars} off his cryptocurrency companies: particularly, with a view to ultimately give all of it away.
The “efficient altruism” motion to which he and his co-workers, together with Ellison, adhered, was by no means talked about at trial.
On a number of events, Bankman-Fried provided to “clarify if you need” and elaborate on sure solutions for the prosecution. Unsurprisingly, the provide was virtually by no means taken up by assistant US legal professional Danielle Sassoon.
The entire above had been foreseeable causes to not take the stand.
Vincent Cohen, a companion at Dechert who spent years as a federal prosecutor earlier than changing into the performing US legal professional for the District of Columbia, says being a defence lawyer is “like banking, it’s important to KYC” — referring to regulatory shorthand for “know your buyer”, or on this case, a consumer.
Testifying works for defendants who’re “very articulate and charismatic and likeable and personable” and who “don’t have three folks within their firm which are testifying towards them,” he provides. Bankman-Fried didn’t match that invoice.
The opinion that he “didn’t have a lot to lose” by taking the stand will probably be examined in March, when Choose Kaplan, who at instances made his exasperation at Bankman-Fried’s evasive solutions abundantly clear, decides on sentencing. A foul efficiency on the stage that may be a US prison courtroom may but condemn him to a lifetime in jail.
Critics have speculated whether or not Camus’s Meursault — who’s damned for not shedding a tear at his mom’s funeral — would at the moment be identified with alexithymia, or a problem to precise socially acceptable emotions. He, too, would doubtless fare no higher if testifying in entrance of a contemporary US jury.
