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.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil met with attorneys for both sides in the settlement room, then called the jury into the courtroom and sent them home. She told jurors to return to court Tuesday.
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. Fishman was released on $100,000 bond and has appeared in court for each of the eight previous trials.
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.
Vyskocil spoke to 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. A game day ended with Vyskocil never returning to the bench.
Concluding arguments in the Mermaid trial began after the prosecution finished the case and the defense took a break without calling a single witness, including Fish-Man. The jury heard testimony over five days from 11 government witnesses, as well as a Eavesdropping on the FBI in which convicted coach Jorge Navarro was recorded speaking to Fishman.
Another prominent name appearing 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 wiretaps, Mermaid appeared to discuss a $2 million “program” with the Sheikh’s hospital in Dubai, called the Dubai Equine. On the other end of the line during the 2019 call was Florida harness coach Adrienne Hall, who testified Thursday that Fishman put her on a program with his PED and that she used medicine for a horse that won the race for low-level rights. Hall agreed to testify in exchange for a non-prosecution agreement.
The transcript of the wiretapping obtained Monday begins with Fishman telling Hall that his program is “not instantaneous.”
“Yes, that’s okay, because they’re racing on Sunday – they’ll be in on Monday. Anyway, I gave away other things 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 show that Dubai Equine spent $2 million on for their Purebreds, you know? It’s part of the show, you know… there’s other stuff. ”
Fishman went on to say that he took Hall slowly.
Fishman adds, “This is what they do for all their horses and overall, they are very happy. Sheikh Mohammed Maktoum said the best three years, you know, for 30 years he’s been racing and they’re very happy. So I’m sharing things with you. But again that was for Thoroughbreds so we just had to tweak a few things because some of the things I designed for Standardbreds, they just didn’t work. “
It’s unclear if Fish-Man was simply trying to impress Hall; A Godolphin spokesman said it would have no comment Monday night.
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.
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 Fish-Man was part of a far-reaching conspiracy to drug racehorses that included top trainers 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 also watched a video of Navarro’s Doped XY Jet (Kantharos) won the $2.5 million G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in 2019. In a text seen by the judges after the race, Navarro thanked Fishman for his help. A tally showed that the FBI wiretapping was one of 55 recordings the jury heard in the case. Almost all of them are Fish-Man related.
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