As Sam Bankman-Fried took the stand on Thursday, a crowded galley of onlookers saw firsthand why defendants typically do not testify at their own criminal trials, with prosecutors eviscerating the disgraced crypto founder during an hours-long cross-examination without jurors present.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers first indicated at a teleconference call on Wednesday that their client would testify in his own defense, introducing a lengthy court filing late that night laying out the themes they planned to tackle.
With the trial resuming on Thursday morning after a brief recess, the prosecution called one last witness—an FBI agent—before resting its case. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s overseeing the case, said he wasn’t convinced that the proposed topics for Bankman-Fried’s testimony had sufficient cause to be argued in front of the jury. Instead, Kaplan held an unusual dry-run hearing, hearing the direct and cross-examinations after sending the 12-person jury home for the day.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sam-bankman-fried-stumbles-cross-223711729.html