The start of Sam Bankman-Fried's trial is two weeks away, and his lawyers are pulling out all the stops to tilt the odds in favor of their client. This includes a skirmish with Justice Department lawyers over the scope of voir dire—the processing of screening for biases among potential jurors. Bankman-Fried's team want to expand the usual set of questions to include some unusual ones, including whether would-be jurors have issues with crypto or their client's philosophy of effective altruism.
Most intriguingly, the defense wants to take the temperature of the jury pool when it comes to Bankman-Fried's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and tell them it could affect his behavior, body language, and eye contact. The prosecution, however, told the judge that the off-the-rack set of voir dire questions will do just fine, and warned that proposed queries about effective altruism and ADHD are an attempt by Bankman-Fried to work the refs—the jurors, in this case—before the trial begins.
In a letter to the court, the Justice Department complained that ADHD is a non-issue since Bankman-Fried takes medication to control it, and suggested the attempt to raise it before the jury is part of a larger pattern of manipulation: It "invites the defendant to disrupt the trial under the guise of exhibiting symptoms of ADHD. This is of particular concern given the defendant’s prior efforts to use behavioral eccentricity to his advantage."
In other words, the government is worried that Bankman-Fried is making his ADHD part of the same con that saw him pull off one of the largest frauds in American history. To drive home the point, the letter cites him telling the New York Times months before FTX collapsed that "I think it's important for people to think I look crazy."
I don't know what to make of all this. On one hand, mental disorders are a serious issue, especially when it comes to a criminal justice system that is quick to incarcerate people even if their actions are beyond their control. On the other, Bankman-Fried is definitely cynical enough to invoke a mental condition in bad faith. We'll learn more soon enough.
In the meantime, it's worth noting that the extensive pre-trial legal jockeying—something that only rich people can afford to do, by the way—is serving another purpose. Christopher Lavigne, an attorney at Withers with decades of experience in white-collar crime, told me that Bankman-Fried's lawyers are pursing two goals. The first is, of course, to keep their client out of prison, while the other is to build a broad record of disputes that could provide grounds for an appeal if it comes to that. In this context, the fight over ADHD is just part of a much bigger game.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
