Martin Shkreli’s criminal fraud trial jury hasn’t been selected yet and already the brash pharmaceutical executive is trying to get the case thrown out of court and lashing out at reporters.
Before court started Tuesday, Shkreli announced on his Facebook page that he bought the internet domain names www.emilysaul.com and www.megtirrell.com. Emily Saul is covering the trial for the New York Post while Meg Tirrell is a CNBC reporter.
Once in court, Shkreli’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman asked to start the trial over because news reports cited negative opinions prospective jurors had expressed about his client. The New York Post’s front page had the headline “Jury of his Jeers.” The judge rejected the request.
More than a dozen people were dismissed from jury service Monday including a woman who called Shkreli “an evil man,” and another who said she knew he’d been labeled “the most hated man in America.”
Brafman also asked U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn, New York, to dismiss the current pool of jurors, saying they were tarnished by the bad publicity, and asked to restart the trial in a few weeks.
“I understand Mr. Shkreli, God bless him, has brought this notoriety upon himself,” Brafman told the judge. Nevertheless, Shkreli has the right to have jurors who aren’t biased, he said.
The judge also denied that request and moved on. Matsumoto agreed to further question the current group of jurors on whether they were swayed by the news stories. Another 100 people were added to the pool. The questioning occurs outside the hearing of others in court.
By requesting a mistrial, Brafman is now free to raise the issue of a tainted jury on appeal, should Shkreli be convicted.
Shkreli, the 34-year-old founder of Retrophin Inc. and Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, is accused of defrauding investors in two hedge funds and using $11 million of Retrophin assets to pay them off.
He bought the domain names “to raise money for my debut album ‘God’s Gift: The Album,”‘ he said in the Facebook post. “I bought these domains for $12 — you can have them for $12,000.” He then typed “Tryna to get that Future feature doe.” It’s not clear what he meant by that.
In a pretrial hearing last week, prosecutor Alixandra Smith said that Shkreli often bought the domain names of reporters who wrote about him in order to annoy them.
At least 130 prospective jurors were dismissed Monday. Many were excused because of work, vacation and other engagements. That trend continued on Tuesday, with the judge releasing dozens more of the 69 she questioned, including a woman who said she read about Shkreli and thought he “just seems to care about himself.”
Shkreli is notorious for having raised the price of a potentially life-saving drug by 5,000 percent.
Matsumoto seemed delighted when she finally came across a woman in her 20s who said she hadn’t heard of Shkreli or his case.
“Oh, very good,” Matsumoto said, allowing the woman to remain as a prospective juror.