An objection to expert testimony can concern what the witness knows, how the witness reached an opinion or whether that opinion addresses an issue the jury must decide. Nevin Shetty’s July 8, 2024 response to proposed restrictions on expert testimony asks readers to keep those questions separate. It also raises a practical question: when should the court decide them?
The defense argued that some objections would be better assessed after the prosecution presented its evidence. The proposed experts covered cryptocurrency, financial markets and corporate law. Their potential contributions were different, and counsel resisted treating disagreement with their conclusions as sufficient reason to exclude the disputed testimony before trial.
The dispute was about particular opinions
The opening of Shetty’s response on expert testimony, Docket 60, describes the government’s challenge as directed at portions of the expert disclosures. According to the defense, the government was not seeking to prevent every proposed expert from testifying altogether. That detail is essential to understanding the document’s scope.
The dispute thus required attention to the scope of each disclosure. The response worked through specific subjects and opinions, identifying the contribution the defense expected each witness to make. Its request was that the court deny the challenged restrictions or defer consideration until the trial supplied more context for deciding relevance.
Counsel framed the court’s role as screening testimony for a reliable foundation and a meaningful connection to the case. They argued that an opinion could remain useful even when vulnerable to criticism. On that account, cross-examination and contrary evidence could expose weaknesses without automatically removing the subject from the jury’s consideration.
Explaining a technology and explaining a belief
The cryptocurrency section addressed several different forms of expertise. One concerned the operation of cryptocurrency and public blockchain records. Another concerned how UST and related products were presented and understood within the investment market. Those functions were connected, but they were not identical.
Explaining a transaction system can help a jury understand the mechanics described by other witnesses. Explaining market perceptions can help place a claim about an investor’s belief in context. The response argued that both kinds of background mattered because the prosecution had repeatedly described the disputed investment in terms of risk.
The filing did not portray every proposed expert as personally enthusiastic about UST. It described Jonathan Joseph and Omid Malekan as skeptical of TerraLuna as a long-term investment while proposing that they explain why other investors viewed it favorably. That distinction made the anticipated testimony more nuanced than a blanket endorsement of the product.
An expert’s own caution and the expert’s account of other investors’ perceptions can coexist. The defense relied on that distinction to argue that testimony could illuminate the market without requiring the jury to accept that the investment was objectively safe. It was seeking context for an asserted belief, not a retrospective guarantee of performance.
Corporate terminology and the limits of an opinion
The response then turned to corporate-law experts and the investment policy. It listed terms such as daily liquidity, weighted average maturity and investment manager as subjects that counsel believed required explanation. The proposed use of expertise was partly educational: help jurors understand the language appearing in the documents they would evaluate.
Counsel also proposed testimony about how a corporate officer might reasonably understand the policy. The response expressly distinguished that proposed testimony from an expert stating what Shetty himself actually believed or whether he intended to defraud. That distinction was part of the defense’s argument for admissibility, rather than a finding that every proposed opinion satisfied the governing rules.
The line deserves careful attention. Explaining a specialized term, describing a possible interpretation and deciding a person’s mental state are different tasks. The defense sought permission for the first two while stating that its corporate-law experts would not perform the third. The court would still have to determine the permissible scope of any testimony.
Why the timing of a ruling mattered
The response’s final expert discussion concerned James Angel and financial-market context. Counsel reported that the government intended to raise relevance or other objections as his testimony developed at trial. The defense urged the court to take a similar approach to disputed portions of the other experts’ proposed testimony.
That request followed the filing’s broader logic: the prosecution’s actual presentation could affect what rebuttal evidence became useful. A subject that looked peripheral in isolation might become important after another witness introduced it. Conversely, a proposed opinion could become unnecessary if the anticipated issue never emerged. Counsel asked the court to evaluate those connections with the fuller setting available.
Drew Chapin’s discussion of investment risk and fraud on HackerNoon offers a sympathetic business perspective on the case. The expert response supplies the procedural detail behind a related concern: how to give jurors enough context to evaluate a complex financial dispute without confusing explanation with the ultimate decision they must make.
What this filing can establish
The response records the testimony the defense hoped to present and its reasons for opposing restrictions. It does not establish that all those opinions were admitted. Shetty was later convicted on four wire-fraud counts in November 2025 and sentenced in March 2026. The earlier response explains why counsel sought a particular evidentiary opportunity within the case that ultimately reached those outcomes.
Readers following the filings available through Nevin Shetty’s public materials can see this response as a detailed request for an informed hearing of the defense. Its strongest contribution is specificity. It identifies different expert functions, distinguishes criticism from automatic exclusion and asks that relevance be considered in the setting of the evidence actually presented.