At #Silk_Road Trial, Lawyers Fight to Include Evidence They Call Vital: Emoji | By BENJAMIN WEISER JAN. 28, 2015
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/nyregion/trial-silk-road-online-black-market-debating-emojis.html
In one example, a prosecutor read what the government says was an exchange between Mr. Ulbricht and an employee about what appears to be a computer program to track disputes between buyers and sellers on Silk Road. Mr. Ulbricht asks, “Are you ready to become judge jury and executioner?”
The employee replies: Yep :)
Then the prosecutor said, “And then there’s an #emoticon.”
The issue of how and whether to explain difficult terms to jurors also arose early in the case.
Last month, Judge Forrest suggested that the parties devise a glossary for jurors, with terms like IP address, Bitcoin, Codebase, configuration files and Tor.
“I do think they need to understand this stuff in order to administer justice here,” the judge said at the time.
But Mr. Dratel seemed reluctant. “Obviously, I’m not inclined to help the government explain its case to the jury,” he said.