The trial of Ross W. Ulbricht, a California man charged with running an online black-market bazaar called Silk Road, had barely begun when an unusual objection was lodged.
At issue was a piece of information that Mr. Ulbricht’s lawyer suggested was critically important, yet was omitted by federal prosecutors: an emoji.
And not just any emoji, or emoticon, as the symbol is sometimes called — it was the gold standard. A version of a smiley face.
The unusual debate, taking place out of the presence of the jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan, arose after a prosecutor finished reading the text of an Internet post. “I’m so excited and anxious for our future, I could burst,” the prosecutor had read to the jury, making no mention of the smiling symbol that followed.
Eventually, the judge, Katherine B. Forrest, instructed the jury that it should take note of any such symbols in messages.
“That is part of the evidence of the document,” she explained.
The trial of Mr. Ulbricht, which is in its third week, has been full of novel twists because of its high-tech intrigue. Mr. Ulbricht, 30, is accused of running the Silk Road website, where the government says several thousand vendors sold drugs and other illicit goods.
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Indeed, once testimony was underway and no glossary had been agreed upon, the judge again raised the issue of the jury’s comprehension of computer terms. Speaking out of the jury’s presence, she cited testimony by a federal agent about the so-called Tor browser, a tool used to search the hidden part of the Internet where Silk Road existed.
She said the term was “mumbo jumbo to most people on the jury right now.”
“I do think clarity of the evidence is important here,” she added.
But no glossary has been provided to the jurors, and in at least one instance, when the agent tried to explain “Bitcoin mining,” his answer seemed to stray toward mumbo jumbo.
“Bitcoin mining is the process of creating a Bitcoin,” he began, “and that is — someone that mines would generally use a computer to specifically run a series of — it is called algorithms — that will try to mathematically create this like perfect string which was of all the different transactions. It confirms them. Once it is confirmed it becomes a part of a block. Once you solve a block, you get a Bitcoin.”
It was unclear what the jury made of the answer; the trial continues.
