NEW YORK — Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried claim in an appeal submitted Friday that the putbehindbars FTX creator was the victim of a rush to judgment by a public that mistakenly thought he was guilty of taking billions of dollars from his consumers and financiers before he was even detained.
The attorneys submitted documents with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking a three-judge panel to reverse his conviction and designate the case to a brand-new judge for a retrial, stating the trial judge “imposed a heavy-handed quarter-century sentence on this novice, non-violent culprit” after they compete he rushed the jury into reaching a one-day decision to cap off a complex four-week trial.
“Sam Bankman-Fried was neverever presumed innocent. He was assumed guilty — before he was even charged. He was assumed guilty by the media. He was assumed guilty by the FTX debtor estate and its legalrepresentatives. He was assumed guilty by federal districtattorneys excited for fast headings. And he was assumed guilty by the judge who administered over his trial,” the legalrepresentatives composed.
They stated the passing of time has cast Bankman-Fried in a muchbetter light.
“From day one, the dominating story — atfirst spun by the legalrepresentatives who took over FTX, rapidly embraced by their contacts at the U.S. Attorney’s Office — was that Bankman-Fried hadactually taken billions of dollars of consumer