Sam Bankman-Fried Is Protected by Magna Carter From Being Fined Billions, a New Brief Argues to Supreme Court

The fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal to the Supreme Court to reverse his criminal convictions for fraud is being bolstered by the greatest authority in Anglo-American law — Magna Carta.A new amicus brief docketed on Friday makes the case that the foundation of English and American liberty bars the $11 billion fine that Mr. Bankman-Fried was ordered to pay by Judge Lewis Kaplan in 2024. Judge Kaplan also sentenced Mr. Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Mr. Bankman-Fried appealed that ruling to the Second United States Appeals Circuit, which denied his petition.The Supreme Court is Mr. Bankman’s last chance — save the seemingly remote possibility of a presidential pardon — to avoid spending more than two decades behind bars after his convictions on seven counts for fraud and conspiracy. The prosecution against him was launched following the collapse in 2022 of his cryptocurrency trading platform, FTX. Prosecutors called it “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”The FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, at Nassau, Bahamas, December 21, 2022. AP/Rebecca BlackwellThe Department of Justice maintains that Mr, Bankman-Fried’s “deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law.” Defenders of Mr. Bankman-Fred, though, observe that the bankruptcy team that took control of FTX after its implosion conducted a firesale that destroyed its value. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s early investments in companies like SpaceX, Cursor, and Anthropic would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars today. Mr. Bankman-Fried has steadfastly defended his innocence and claimed that FTX confronted a liquidity problem, not a solvency catastrophe. He told The New York Sun last year that the case against him was marred by “prosecutorial abuse” and “politicization” of the Department of Justice. His lawyers contend that their client “was never presumed innocent. He was presumed guilty — before he was even charged.”Five amicus briefs docketed at the Supreme Court on Friday make the case for Mr. Bankman-Fried’s innocence from a range of angles. The briefs come from the Due Process Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and three groups of legal academics specializing in contracts, bankruptcy, and constitutional law. These briefs argue in favor of the Supreme Court taking Mr. Bankman Fried’s case — and reversing his fines and convictions.Mr. Bankman-Fried contends that the fine imposed by Judge Kaplan violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on the imposition of “excessive fines.” In 2019 the Supreme Court called this taboo “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and ruled that to be “excessive” the punishment must be “proportioned to the wrong” and not “so large as to deprive an offender of his livelihood.” Last year Mr. Trump successfully argued that the Eighth Amendment barred the $500 million civil fraud verdict secured by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.One of four surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta. It was damaged In 1731 by a fire at Ashburnam House at Westminster. British Library Via Wikimedia CommonsNow a group of legal scholars have banded together to write a brief arguing that not only is Mr. Bankman-Fried’s punishment barred by the American Constitution, but it is also precluded by Magna Carta. Latin for “Great Charter,” it was signed in 1215 as a peace treaty of sorts to end hostility between a Plantagenet king, John I, and discontented barons. For more than eight centuries it has been seen as the bedrock of the constitutional tradition both in Britain and on these shores. Magna Carta begins “JOHN, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting.” It proceeds to ordain that “A Free-man shall not be amerced for a small fault, but after the manner of the fault; and for a great fault after the greatness thereof, saving to him his contenement.” “Contenment” meant the resources needed to sustain both the offender and his dependents. The Supreme Court has repeatedly insisted that the ancestor of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment is this clause from Magna Carta. Sir Winston Churchill reckoned that the “reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.” “Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John,” published in 1914 by the legal scholar William Sharp McKechnie, notes that the parchment signed at Runnymede requires leaving the offender “sufficient for the sustenance of himself and those dependent on him.” Magna Carta’s meaning appears to have been internalized by John’s son and successor, King Henry III. Fine rolls during his reign show penalties assessed “according to the manner of that trespass and the quantity of their goods, saving their contenement.”The brief in favor of Mr. Bankman-Fried reckons that a “defining feature of the Magna Carta was protecting Englishmen against fines that would destroy their livelihoods.” The government has until November 16 to tell the justices why they ought to leave his convictions undisturbed. A decision on whether to take the case could come early in the new year. One of the Constitution’s most resonant promises — that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — is an echo of Magna Carta’s order that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned … except by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Sam Bankman-Fried Is Protected by Magna Carter From Being Fined Billions, a New Brief Argues to Supreme Court

Sam Bankman-Fried Is Protected by Magna Carter From Being Fined Billions, a New Brief Argues to Supreme Court

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