The legal team representing Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) have renewed their calls to secure an early release for their client to help him better prepare for his trial, which is scheduled to begin next month.
According to the attorneys, the internet in federal prison is not very reliable and this is making it difficult for their client to prepare for his trial.
New filing
On Friday, a new filing was submitted by the lawyers of the former CEO of FTX to a federal judge in which the lawyers made the request.
They said in the filing that their client did not have access to adequate internet required for reviewing documents that would help him prepare for his defense.
According to the attorneys, after their client was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, they lost valuable time to prepare for the trial effectively.
This is due to the conditions at the federal jail that are making things difficult. Therefore, the lawyers said that they wanted to reiterate their request that the court grant temporary release to their client.
Previous filing
The latest request comes after a previous one had been submitted on September 5th in which the lawyers had highlighted the numerous ways in which the correctional facility’s conditions were making trial preparations for Bankman-Fried’s defense difficult.
The lawyers said that they had been assured by the prosecution that SBF would be granted access to a laptop from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, but that had not been the case.
They said that he had been called back to his cell on September 1st for a headcount and four hours had been wasted.
In another instance, the lawyers said that he had not been permitted to leave his cell until 11 a.m. Other than the late release, he had also been unable to access the internet.
Therefore, this resulted in more lost time in trying to upload just one document for discovery material.
The argument
According to the attorneys of the disgraced crypto mogul, the internet problem in the cellblock has not been resolved, despite the assurances of the government.
They went on to say that with such limitations, it would not be possible for their client to prepare for his defense.
The sheer amount of material involved in the FTX case has proven to be a logistical nightmare, as almost four million pages worth of documents had been shared by federal prosecutors on August 28th.
The defense claims that reviewing so many documents would be too much, even if they had unlimited time on their hands before the trial was scheduled to begin on October 3rd.
The matter is further complicated by the claim of the defense that SBF is the only one with full knowledge about the facts and companies in question.
Initially, Bankman-Fried had been preparing for his defense from his parent’s home in Palo Alto, California, but then his bail had been revoked over concerns about possible witness tampering.