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Prosecution In Samourai Wallet Case Affirms It Did Not Violate The Brady Rule
In a letter to the Southern District of New York (SDNY) submitted today, the district attorneys in the Samourai Wallet case specified that they did not keep exculpatory proof and petitioned the judge for the case to reject the defense’s ask for a hearing to go over the late disclosure of essential info that district attorneys had actually acquired from FinCEN nearly 2 years earlier.
Earlier in the week, the defense specified in a letter that they’d found out that FinCEN had “strongly suggested” that Samourai Wallet was not functioning as a cash transferring service due to the noncustodial nature of the item in a conversation in between particular FinCEN members (more on these members 2 areas down) and the district attorneys on August 23, 2023.
This info emerged thanks to a Brady movement that the defense had actually sent. (This kind of movement is called after the Brady v. Maryland Supreme Court case, which occurred in 1963. The case developed the Brady rule, which states that exculpatory proof be offered to the defense so that it can be made use of as a part of due procedure.)
Given that a person of the 2 charges the Samourai designers are dealing with is conspiracy to run an unlicensed cash transferring service, some felt that this brand-new info emerging might be premises for dismissing the case.
No Dismissal, No Hearing
However, today’s letter from the district attorneys specifies that they have no intent of dropping the case, nor do they feel that the hearing asked for by the defense is required.
“There is no basis for a hearing, nor is there anything to remedy: the disclosure itself shows that the government has not violated Brady,” the district attorneys specified in the letter. “The Government disclosed all known substantive communications between the prosecution team and FinCEN months in advance of pretrial motions and trial.”
The district attorneys included that they prepare to continue with the case, highlighting the 2nd charge: conspiracy to dedicate cash laundering.
“As alleged, Samourai laundered over $100 million dollars of crime proceeds originating from, among other criminal sources: illegal darkweb markets, such as Silk Road and Hydra Market; various wired fraud and computer fraud schemes that deprived victims of funds, including web-server intrusion, a spear phishing scheme, and schemes to defraud multiple decentralized finance protocols; and other illegal activities,” the district attorneys composed.
Downplaying The Input From FinCEN
Furthermore, the district attorneys declared that the reality that they just just recently revealed their interactions with FinCEN is unimportant to the case, as much of the charged conduct does not count on FinCEN policies.
They also minimized the value of what was shared by the FinCEN workers who talked to the district attorneys: Kevin O’Conner (Chief of FinCEN’s Virtual Assets and Emerging Technology Section in the Enforcement and Compliance Division) and Lorena Valente (a staff member of FinCEN’s Policy Division when she talked to the prosecution).
The district attorneys described O’Conner and Valente’s viewpoints as “individual, informal, and caveated,” including that they had actually currently offered “substantive email correspondence between the prosecution team and members of FinCEN relating to the August 23, 2023 call.”
They went on to state that “the individual employees of FinCEN were not speaking on behalf of FinCEN, they were not providing FinCEN’s opinion, and they ‘did not have a sense of what FinCEN would decide if this question were presented to their FinCEN policy committee.’”
No Brady Violation
In the last area of the letter, the district attorneys asserted that they had actually not broken legal standards in not providing particular information of their August 23, 2023 call with FinCEN till this point in the pre-trial procedure.
“The record shows that there was no Brady violation in this case,” composed the district attorneys.
“The government disclosed the contents of this informal conversation to the defense in advance of pretrial motions, and approximately seven months in advance of trial in response to a request for that information,” they included. “Nothing more is required.”
Lastly, according to a Second Circuit judgment, which the district attorneys also pointed out in the letter, as long as the defense has Brady proof in time for its reliable usage, the federal government has actually not denied the defense of due procedure.
What Comes Next?
It’s uncertain regarding when Judge Berman will react to today’s letter from the prosecution.
The defense’s opening movement was initially arranged for today however has actually been pressed back 2 weeks. One week after the opening movement, the prosecution will react to the defense’s opening movement.
As of the last pre-trial hearing, the prosecution is arranged to supply its specialist disclosure on July 15, 2025, and the defense is anticipated to supply theirs by August 8, 2025.
The trial is arranged to start on November 3, 2025.
If you’d like to contribute to the defense fund for the Samourai designers, you can do so by means of the P2P Rights Fund.
This post Prosecution In Samourai Wallet Case Affirms It Did Not Violate The Brady Rule initially appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is composed by Frank Corva.
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