New Yorker Jake Letizia enjoys making people laugh. But Judge John G. Koeltl of Federal District Court was not amused.
After the defendant’s attorney discovered Letizia was sharing jokes about the trial online, he requested an appeal. And he got it.
The trial by jury was in late 2019, and the defendant, Akshay Aiyer was convicted. Aiyer was a currency trader and had been charged with conspiring to manipulate the pricing in a global exchange foreign currency market.
Once convicted, Aiyer was sentenced to eight months in prison. However, he is currently free on bail since his case is now pending an appeal ignited by Letizia’s comedy.
Like many people who serve as jurors, Letizia did not want to be selected. When he did get chosen to be a juror in a federal securities case in NYC in 2020, he was not smiling.
The judge in the case specifically warned the jury that they were not allowed to discuss the case with anyone.
But Letizia, a popular comic, disregarded the judge’s instructions and started to complain and joke on his weekly podcast, Talkin’ to Myself, and on social media platforms such as YouTube and Spotify.
In one of his early posts, Letizia wrote, “I don’t care about any of this. I don’t want to be here.” On his podcasts, the comic criticized the judge, lawyers, and defendant and used vulgar descriptions about a court employee.
Once the court discovered Letizia had been going public with comedic comments about the trial, the judge informed attorneys from both sides. The judge said Letizia never discussed trial evidence from the trial and that he believed the comic’s rants “appeared to be hyperbolic exaggerations.”
Defense attorneys, however, saw an opening to appeal Aiyer’s conviction and seized it. In court, the defense counsel said the comic’s public podcasts were “a flagrant violation of the judge’s instructions and revealed in explicit detail his contempt for the jury’s responsibilities. It was as if the juror “were offering commentary to news reporters each day after court,” the lawyers said in an earlier filing.”
With the sweeping escalation of social media and digital communication, the issue of what a juror may share with the public is yet another new niche for attorneys and an opportunity for defendants.
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