Trial: Blocked Defense Witnesses

At trial, Ross was deprived of the vital opportunity to challenge the prosecution’s testimony and evidence.

“By precluding the defense experts, who would have countered the complex testimony regarding bitcoin presented by the government, the government witnesses’ testimony essentially went unchallenged, and Ulbricht was denied his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to present a defense.”
– Excerpt from Ross’s appeal.[1]

Prosecutors presented complex and lengthy expert testimony through several law enforcement agents. This testimony was critical to their case, which relied almost exclusively on digital data and an understanding of technical computer terms, cryptocurrency and Internet technology. The agents were never qualified as experts, and the major weaknesses and holes in their testimony would have been exposed had the defense been allowed to challenge them before the jury.

One of the prosecutions’ witnesses was FBI agent Ilhwan Yum. Yum analyzed the Bitcoin wallet seized from Ross’s laptop and produced a “voluminous spreadsheet and an extraordinarily complex analysis of millions of Bitcoin addresses and sophisticated computer software,”[2] which was dumped on Ross and his lawyers at the last possible moment mid-trial.

When Ross’s attorneys sought to refute and challenge the testimony of Yum and other government witnesses by calling their only two expert witnesses, both were prevented from testifying. Ross’s defense was hamstrung and the erroneous testimony went unchallenged.

Andreas Antonopoulos

Andreas Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator and one of the world’s foremost Bitcoin experts.[3]

His testimony would have explained to the jury a number of technically complex and abstract concepts involving Bitcoin and countered certain aspects of Yum’s testimony, particularly the massive spreadsheet he produced mid-trial. Antonopoulos would have highlighted defects in Yum’s description of Bitcoin mechanics, in his definition of important terminology, and in his forensic analysis of bitcoin addresses. Also, he would have distinguished principles of ownership, control, and access related to Bitcoin wallets in counterpoint to the flawed conclusions in Yum’s testimony.[4]

Antonopoulos would have explained that the digital wallet containing 144,000 bitcoins found on Ross’s laptop at the time of his arrest was a shared Silk Road wallet that all DPRs (the top administrators) had access to.

Andreas Antonopoulos

Steven Bellovin

Steven Bellovin

Steven Bellovin is a Computer Science professor at Columbia University and a leading expert on computer networking and internet security.[5]

Bellovin’s testimony would have addressed a number of technical computer and internet-related issues which the defense was prevented from addressing during cross-examination. Those matters included general principles of internet security and vulnerabilities, PHP computer programming, forensic memory analysis, general issues related to linux-based operating systems, and principles of public key cryptography. Each of these issues was significantly implicated in the testimony of the government’ witnesses, as well as in the evidence related to the prosecution’s forensic examination and analysis of Ross’s laptop.[6]

The prosecution succeeded in having the presiding judge gag the defense, and both Bellovin and Antonopolous were not allowed to testify. She ruled that “it would be…unfair to make the government prepare to cross-examine expert witnesses on short notice.”[7]

The judge’s decision was entirely asymmetrical: the prosecution was permitted to bring forth testimony for which cross-examination was precluded, and the prosecution was allowed to include complex, lengthy summary exhibits created mid-trial while Dratel was not permitted to confront them at all.

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