On Sunday, lawyers representing Sam Bankman-Fried submitted a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over his criminal trial.
In the said letter, the lawyers requested that their client be allowed to access his prescribed medication during his trial because he is facing difficulty focusing without it.
The filing
The defense said in the filing that the FTX co-founder suffers from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and had been prescribed Adderall, which he had to take throughout the day.
However, since his trial started two weeks earlier, he is only allowed to take the medication once in the morning before he is transported to court.
The letter said that he had been trying to focus during the trial even though he did not get the prescribed dose of Adderall during the trial hours.
It said that they were now approaching the defense case and had to decide whether Bankman-Fried would testify or not.
Therefore, they were concerned that lack of access to his medication was making it difficult for their client to concentrate on the same level that he would ordinarily.
According to the defense attorneys, they had reached out to the prison officials to resolve the issue but had not gotten a response.
The proposal
The lawyers had asked that an extended 12-hour dose be given to their client of his medication on Monday morning before the trial began.
But, they said that there was no guarantee that it would be effective and if prison officials would accept the said proposal.
The letter said that if this proposal does not work because the dose is not effective or because the prison officials do not comply, then they would like the trial to be adjourned for a day.
This would give them enough time to come up with a solution that could be used for the remainder of the trial.
The filing requested the court to permit the attorneys to provide their client with the medication during the trial days at the courthouse.
The background
This filing comes as the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried in which he is accused of wire fraud and conspiracy has begun its third week.
Last year, his FTX crypto exchange went bankrupt and this has resulted in his prosecution. If he is convicted, he could face a sentence of about 115 years.
The need for medication for the fallen crypto mogul was first brought up last December in the Bahamas when he first appeared in court.
He had asked permission to apply a patch that contained his medication because he had been without it since he was arrested.
In the remarks that Bankman-Fried had prewritten to give to Congress, he had mentioned that he takes a patch medication for treating depression called Epsem.
It remains unclear if he is taking the same medication still. Other than accessing his medication, Bankman-Fried has also struggled to keep up with his vegan diet in jail.
He has been limited to peanut butter, water, and bread during custody.