The long, sordid prosecution of Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs programmer railroaded by his old bosses for copying snippets of code he worked on, has managed to take another ludicrous turn. After Goldman Sachs pushed federal prosecutors into throwing the book at Aleynikov, securing an 8-year prison sentence, the programmer served one year before the Second Circuit walloped the U.S. Attorney’s Office for misapplying the law. In a stunt seemingly designed to curry favor with the financial bigwigs who flood the New York political scene with campaign dollars, Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. brought state charges against the freshly-exonerated Aleynikov. And now that trial has come to a close amidst a spirited jury fight over whether or not someone stole an avocado slice from a sandwich.
Yes, that’s really what happened, and this culinary fracas nearly sparked a mistrial. Per New York Times Dealbook:
The possible mistrial stemmed from a dispute between two jurors deciding Mr. Aleynikov’s fate; a female juror accused a male one of “food tampering,” in part because an avocado was missing from her sandwich. The female juror also said she took a blood test to determine whether she had been poisoned, temporarily turning the criminal proceedings into a culinary whodunit.
But the judge overseeing the case, Justice Daniel P. Conviser of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, called her accusations “completely unfounded.” And after he dismissed the feuding jurors — and Mr. Aleynikov’s lawyer, Kevin Marino, dropped his request for a mistrial — both sides agreed to continue with a 10-member jury.
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The jury ordered its sandwiches from the Mon Cher market, which — NYT helpfully reports — charges an extra $1 to adorn your sandwich with avocado. If that seems steep, wait until the California drought turns avocados into the new heroin.
Also, before we move on from this gastronomic grudge match, let’s remember the American criminal justice system prides itself on allowing the sort of woman who genuinely believes someone poisoned her because she didn’t get an avocado slice on her sandwich to pronounce life and death decisions on another human being.
In a result that highlighted how confusing this whole affair truly is, the reconstituted jury trudged on from Avocado-gate and settled upon a patchwork verdict that puzzled everyone involved. The jury cleared Aleynikov of an unlawful duplication charge, but convicted him on one count of unlawful use of secret scientific material, while deadlocking on the other charge of the same law. The problem stems from the nebulous definition of “scientific material.”
New York Penal Law 155.00 defines “scientific material” as, “any… article” evidencing a “scientific or technical process, invention, or formula.” Courts have held that this covers computer software to the extent the software reflects a process. But in this case, where experts doubted Aleynikov had any plan to use the code for the benefit of himself or a future employer and where the code itself probably put Goldman Sachs in violation of a licensing agreement the case got murky for our intrepid jury.
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Indeed, the jury may be flat wrong. Justice Conviser signaled he might throw the whole case out notwithstanding the verdict.
Justice Conviser has expressed some skepticism about the case and left open the possibility that he might throw out the conviction, a rare step that takes place when a judge concludes that a verdict is legally invalid. His decision is expected in about five weeks.
And even if the conviction stands, Justice Conviser signaled on Friday that he was unlikely to send Mr. Aleynikov to prison, telling prosecutors that he was lifting Mr. Aleynikov’s $35,000 bail. Mr. Marino is likely to emphasize that Mr. Aleynikov already served a year in federal prison before the appeals court vacated his conviction.
If Aleynikov ultimately walks away a free man, on the one hand justice will be served, but on the other this whole sad episode will likely recede into the mists. Which will be too bad, because in the proper context, the case provides a valuable lesson of the gross influence a Wall Street heavy can exert over public servants at both the state and federal level. At a time when the bank largely escaped any official scrutiny for its role in the global financial collapse, it convinced those same public servants to seek hefty jail time for a computer geek.
Which is probably the only thing more disturbing than trusting avocado-loving conspiracy theorists to sit on juries.
Mixed Verdicts in Second Trial of Aleynikov, Ex-Goldman Sachs Programmer [New York Times / Dealbook]