Some of the U.S. Department of Justice's proposed juror questions could bias either miss juror biases or prejudice potential jurors into thinking Sam Bankman-Fried was guilty before the trial begins, the FTX founder's defense team charged in a late Friday filing.
s proposed voir dire discourages full Disclosure from potential jurors, fails to elicit sufficient information to allow the defense to ascertain potential juror bias, and risks tainting the jury by presenting the allegations in a prejudicial manner.
The DOJ and the defense all proposed voir dire questions to the judge on Sept.11. A few days later, lawyers for the DOJ objected to Bankman-Fried's proposed questions, saying some of them are 'unnecessarily intrusive' about the potential jurors' thoughts on FTX and its related companies, as well as the case.
Like Friday's filing from the defense, the DOJ contends that some of the proposed questions appeared designed to prime potential jurors into believing certain defense arguments and otherwise bias them toward Bankman-Fried prior to trial.
Voir dire will begin on Oct. 3. CoinDesk asked New Yorkers in lower Manhattan if they'd heard of FTX or Bankman-Fried earlier this month to gauge what a random selection of individuals might say.
In a separate filing Monday, the defense team said it had no problems with the judge granting immunity to two unnamed witnesses. Judge Kaplan asked whether the defense would ask that the witness first invoke their Fifth Amendment right to not potentially incriminate themselves first during a hearing on Thursday.