Original author: Zack Guzmán

Original compilation: Frank, Foresight News

Editor's note: The Manhattan regulatory agency in the United States held a trial for Terra and its co-founder Do Kwon on Monday local time, but Do Kwon was absent from the trial as he had been transferred to a foreigner "reception center" in Montenegro on March 23, awaiting a final extradition decision.

The case of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) vs. Do Kwon/Terra officially began in a Manhattan court today. This article excerpts the opening statements from the jury, the SEC, and the defense team (along with some very funny materials provided by Judge Rakoff).

This is also my first time back in court since the SBF trial, and I found that the number of people is much fewer compared to the SBF case—because even though I was late, there were still seats available.

The most obvious difference, however, is that everyone in the courtroom is wearing suits.

Jury selection

Judge Rakoff established some basic rules from the beginning:

• The entire trial period is expected to last two weeks;

• Only up to 4 words are allowed to express objections;

"The only way to make me angry is to quickly raise an objection. You only need to say three words: Objection, lack of foundation. Well, maybe I can tolerate you extending it to four words."

Regarding the explanation for Do Kwon's absence from the trial, there was some small-scale argument between the two sides, until Judge Rakoff asked, "Do you really want me to say that he's too busy being abroad? This might lead the jury to speculate."

The defense agreed to this (it is well known that Do Kwon is serving a sentence for forging a passport and is currently in Montenegro).

The jury selection began, and as everyone got to know the potential jurors more, both sides took turns dismissing jurors (Foresight News note: the court will randomly select several times the final required number of potential jurors from local residents, each candidate will be briefly informed of the case background and will undergo about 30 minutes of extended questioning by lawyers and judges in court. The judge is looking for jurors who can neutrally, fairly, and openly consider all parties and make judgments based on evidence and law. Lawyers also hope to select such jurors, but they will also exclude candidates with inherent biases that may be detrimental to their clients).

Initially, there were many female jurors, and the first batch of jurors included 6 women and 3 men, most of whom were from ethnic minorities:

Among the 3 men, one was divorced, one was involved in a pending personal injury lawsuit, and one had a girlfriend… none of them owned cryptocurrency, which explains why the divorced juror was wearing a jacket of the NFL New York Giants (Foresight News note: FTXZ had placed commercial advertisements during the National Football League NFL Super Bowl).

Judge Rakoff joked that he is also a fan of the New York Giants—"That's why I'm wearing black, because I'm mourning." This joke made the whole courtroom laugh, but a New York sports humor segment appearing in a trial involving a Korean company left the Korean media very confused.

Interestingly, a man said he had spent thousands of dollars on Bitcoin and Ethereum, but was still rejected and could not become a juror for Terra tokens; another woman said she was a juror in a counterfeit case, which could not be convicted due to lack of intent, but ironically, she was also rejected and could not become a juror.

Opening statements

In the opening statements, Judge Rakoff made it clear:

• Did Terraform Labs (TFL) misleadingly use Chai to represent Terra?

• Did TFL mislead about the reasons for UST being pegged to the US dollar?

Both the prosecution and defense had 30 minutes for their statements.

The SEC went first, but their arguments were almost a copy-and-paste of the Department of Justice's case against SBF and FTX, especially the opening and closing statements were almost word for word the same:

"This is a case of fraud," "This trial does not involve technology."

The defense's opening statement was directly taken from the content disclosed by Do Kwon in a previous interview: "Failure does not equal fraud" (further reading "Dialogue with Terra founder: I bet everything, but this time I lost").

The lawyers also strongly condemned the SEC's selection of facts and mocking testimony, and indicated that Chai did indeed use Terra.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。