The Tornado Cash Trail began today in the southern district of New York (SDNY).
Only during the first 90 minutes of the day the judge Failla, the judge who chaired the trial, took the charge and defense in front of the classroom. The rest of the day was dedicated to the jury selection process.
The judge started the session by discussing three remaining movements in limino From the defense, including one regarding opposition to the drawing of data from Tornado’s mobile phone in cash Alexey Pertsev and another regarding one Brady request by the defense.
Motion in Limine n. 1: Data extraction from Persev’s phone
Both in a conference on the state on Friday and in a letter sent to the Court during the weekend, the defense questioned the integrity of the data extracted from the Alexey Pertsev phone, the co-founder of Tornado in cash that was sentenced to 64 months in prison in the Netherlands due to accusations of money recycling relating to Tornado Cash.
He said that some of the messages in the data, in particular the messages of the Pertsev telegram, were missing from context and therefore should not be eligible.
The defense referred to a particular message, a quote was attributed to Pertsev: “Heya, anyone around to talk about Axie? Would like to ask some general questions about how to collect 600 mil.”
The message referred to the 600 million dollar cryptit of the Axie Infinity online game, funds from which they were recycled through Tornado Cash. What the court documents did not originally show was that this message had been forwarded by a COINDESK Reporter of the accused, Roman storm, from Pertsev.
The judge faced the problem but declared that it was not a basis to exclude the rest of the data extracted from the Pertsev phone from the body of the tests in case.
Motion in Limine #2: denying the defense Brady Request
Judge Failla has also denied the recent request for Brady Della Defense. (This type of request takes its name from Brady v. Maryland Case of the Supreme Court, which took place in 1963. The case established the Brady Rule, which establishes that the descent tests are provided to defense so that it can be used as part of the right trial.)
“The idea that there is more information on the onculpatori is highly unlikely,” said Judge Failla.
The defense did not rejected the judge’s decision.
Questioning the legitimacy of the data provided by the custodians
Some of the data that the accusation plans to use as proof in case have been provided by companies including Apple, X and Dragonfly (the risk capital company that has invested in cash in Tornado).
The defense has questioned the legitimacy of the data provided in the light of the recent discovery of the wrong telegram message.
Has requested representatives of these companies to testify during the process on the legitimacy of the data.
Judge Failla denied this request, stating that these testimonies were not necessary.
The defense accepted the denial regarding Apple and X, but rejected in support of the request as it concerned the dragonfly, calling to question the relevance of the data provided by the dragonfly and the devices from which the data were obtained.
Dragonfly Telegram messages problems
The defense said that the messages of the telegram of Dragonfly employees that the company delivered to the court should not be included in the corpus of evidence (while they also affirmed that the cash documents in cash that the company delivered was well to be included).
To this, the accusation admitted that some of these telegram messages contained a hearing of saying, but explained that the messages also contained information on commercial relations in cash of Tornado and that, therefore, they should not be excluded from the evidence corpus.
Judge Failla therefore cited a sentence by the United States against El Gammal, a case of the second circuit of 2020 which provided that the Facebook registers were company registers, in defense of maintaining messages as part of the evidence corpus.
The accusation also mentioned US VS. Figueroa, a case of 2023 in which the Court decided that it was legal to admit the company registers that are legal in certain contexts, claiming that the messages of the telegram that the Court had obtained are both company and relevant registers.
In a final declaration on the matter, the defense said that they were only hypothetization that the devices from which the telegram messages were obtained were devices owned by the company.
Judge Failla, in particular agitated by this statement, said that the defense had no basis for this statement and that he had a certification that stated that the phones were in fact company devices.
The accusation added that the registers that Dragonfly produced were in response to a quote from the jury, alluding to the idea that it would have been unlikely that Dragonfly had chosen to pardon himself on such a question.
Jury selection
The jury selection process started at 11:15 East and lasted for the rest of the day.
About 45 of the 90 juroring potentials turned to the court and/or spoke with the judge in a sidebar session.
The jury selection process will resume tomorrow at 9:00 east.
If the weather allows it, the accusation and the defense will make their opening declarations later during the day tomorrow.