The defense attorney for a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc programmer accused of stealing the investment bank's high-frequency trading code has asked a Manhattan judge for a mistrial.
Sergey Aleynikov's lawyer asked for the mistrial after two of the jurors revealed that they had a personal conflict. The courtroom was closed while the jurors discussed their conflict with Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Daniel Conviser, with the attorneys in the case present.
Conviser said in open court that one of the jurors had expressed concern that food had been tampered with, but he did not elaborate. He also said that both jurors had told him they could continue deliberating.
Conviser said he would rule on Wednesday morning on the mistrial application. The judge said he wanted to avoid a mistrial, noting that jurors had already been deliberating for four days, but would have to consider whether Aleynikov could get a fair trial.
Aleynikov's lawyer, Kevin Marino, said he did not believe his client could.
Prosecutors had charged Aleynikov, a dual citizen of Russia and the United States, with stealing the computer code as he prepared to leave Goldman for a high-frequency trading startup in Chicago.
A mistrial would leave Aleynikov, one of the key figures in Michael Lewis's bestselling book "Flash Boys," in limbo, possibly facing a trial before a new jury.
Aleynikov, 45, first arrested by federal agents in 2009, was previously tried and convicted in federal court. An appeals court threw out the conviction in 2012, saying the anti-espionage law did not apply and setting Aleynikov free after about a year.
Roughly six months later, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance revived the case in state court and charged Aleynikov in August 2012 with unlawful use of secret scientific material and unlawful duplication of computer-related material.
During closing arguments in the state case, Marino did not dispute that his client copied code from Goldman's high-frequency trading software for his own use in June 2009.
However, he said prosecutors failed to prove that Aleynikov had broken the state laws under which he was charged. He said there was no evidence that Aleynikov took anything of value from Goldman by copying the code.
New York Assistant District Attorney Daniel Holmes countered that the case was as "simple" as "a man taking something that he had no right to take."
The case is People v. Aleynikov, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 04447/2012.
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