The U.S. Department of Justice filed its proposed set of jury instructions for Sam Bankman-Fried’s October trial a day before he is set to be arraigned on a new superseding indictment.
Prosecutors filed the document, titled “the government’s requests to charge,” late Monday, adapting from various previous sets of jury instructions including past statements from Judge Lewis Kaplan, the Southern District of New York judge overseeing Bankman-Fried’s case. The FTX founder faces seven different charges, ranging from wire, securities and commodities fraud conspiracy to money laundering allegations.
Monday’s filing lays out each of the different counts arrayed against Bankman-Fried in detail, explaining the differences between “substantive crimes” and “crimes of conspiracy.”
The substantive crimes “charge a defendant with the actual commission or attempted commission … of an offense,” the proposal says, while the conspiracy charges require an agreement with another individual.
The proposed jury instructions also spell out what jurors must keep in mind if they vote to convict: that there was a scheme to defraud, that the defendant “knowingly and willfully participated” in said scheme and that the defendant used interstate wires (which includes the internet).
Bankman-Fried is currently set to go on trial at the beginning of October. He was recently remanded to jail after Judge Kaplan revoked his bond. The judge ruled that the onetime FTX CEO had violated his bail conditions in contacting FTX.US general counsel Ryne Miller and sharing former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison’s diary with the New York Times.
