The arguments ended up being a scratch late January 31 in veterinarian Seth Fishman’s equine doping trial being held in United States District Court in Manhattan.
Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil of the U.S. District Court for the District of New York, United States, met with attorneys for both parties in the trial room and then called the jury into the courtroom and sent them home. She told the jurors to return to court on February 1.
Vyskocil told the jury of eight women and four men: “There have been growing legal issues that need to be addressed.
But Fishman’s absence from court only deepened the mystery. His wife, Hanna, was in the courtroom that morning and at one point appeared visibly upset. He doesn’t have a $100,000 deposit and has appeared in court for each of the eight previous hearings.
The only clue as to what was going on was when Fishman’s attorney Maurice Sercarz appeared in the courtroom after the jury had been dismissed and told Judge Fishman was on his way to the hospital.
“We’re in a public trial,” Vyskocil told Sercarz in admonition.
Sercarz and co-advisor Marc Fernich and prosecutors declined to comment further.
In the afternoon, the lawyers were present for another meeting in the trial room. The day ended with Vyskocil never back on the bench.
Closing arguments are set to begin after the prosecution has finished the case and the defense has rested without calling a single witness, including Fishman. The jury heard the testimony of 11 government witnesses for five days.
Fishman, 50, is on trial for conspiracy to violate drug dispensing and mislabeling laws. He is accused of supplying horse trainers with illegal performance-enhancing drugs designed to evade scrutiny by racing regulators in various states, including Florida, New York and Kentucky.
Dr. Seth Fishman is on trial at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Court in New York
Sercarz said that the actions his client allegedly took were taken to protect the health and welfare of the horses in accordance with his oath as a licensed veterinarian.
Prosecutors allege that Fishman was part of a far-reaching conspiracy to drug racehorses that included top trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis and two dozen others. The United States Attorney’s Office in New York announced the charges in March 2020.
Servis is awaiting trial and Navarro was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty.
Servis’s name was not given in the testimony, but Navarro’s name appeared numerous times. Prosecutors said Navarro paid Fishman tens of thousands of dollars in PED.
The jury watched a video of Navarro .’s adulteration XY Jet won the $2.5 million Dubai Golden Shaheen sponsored by Gulf News (G1) in 2019. In a text seen by the judges after the race, Navarro thanked Fishman for his help. his help. XY Jet later died of an apparent heart attack in early January 2020.
During the trial, prosecutors also played an FBI wiretapping tape in which Navarro was recorded talking to Fishman.
Another prominent name that appeared in court in one of the wiretapping tapes was Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and owner of the internationally successful Godolphin racetrack. On the other end of the line during the 2019 call was Florida harness coach Adrienne Hall, who testified January 27 that Fishman put her on a show with his PED and that she used drugs for a horse that won a race for a low level . Hall agreed to testify in exchange for a non-prosecution agreement.
On wiretapping, Fishman appeared to discuss a $2 million “program” that Dubai Equine, a veterinary hospital built by Sheikh Mohammed in 1995, had devised for Thoroughbreds.
The transcript of the wiretapping obtained Monday begins with Fishman telling Hall that his program is “not instantaneous.”
“Yes, that’s OK, because they’re racing on Sunday — they’ll be in on Monday. Anyway, I put other stuff in today,” Hall said.
Fishman then went on to say that it took a week or two to get things going.
“This is a show,” he said. “This is a program where Dubai Equine spent maybe $2 million to create their Purebred, you know? It’s part of the program you know… there are other things. more.”
Fishman went on to say that he was taking Hall slowly.
Fishman adds, “This is what they do for all their horses and overall, they are very happy. Sheikh (sic) Mohammed Maktoum (sic) said the best three years, you know, in the 30 years he’s been racing and they’re fun. So I’m sharing stuff with you. But again it’s for Thoroughbreds so we just had to tweak a few things because some of the stuff I designed for Standardbreds don’t work So that’s why I charge you a fraction of what I normally charge, so let’s take the easy steps and we’ll go from there. , Okay. “
A representative for Godolphin was unavailable for comment Monday night.
A tally showed the wiretapping tape was one of 55 recordings the jury heard in the case. Almost all of them are Fish-Man related.
Leading industry publications Thoroughbred are working together to cover this important trial.
