Day 7 - January 26, 2015

The court restricted references to cooperators' exposure to life imprisonment absent a specific factual basis, while permitting inquiry into cooperation bias. It also clarified that it had not sustained the earlier Bates objection and would not revisit his testimony. Christopher Jon Beeson continued answering questions about laptop collection. He testified that RAM capture began two days after receipt of the laptop and that FMEM crashed the computer during capture. Capture resumed after restart, but some unidentified information was permanently lost. He agreed that the RAM capture left an incomplete view of contemporaneous computer activity. On redirect, he denied that the errors prevented a complete copy of the partition discussed on direct or could have generated previously absent TOR check logs. He ultimately noted that he had not conducted the laptop's forensic examination. IRS Special Agent Gary Luis Alford traced early Silk Road publicity through Altoid forum posts and WordPress instructions. He identified emails addressed to Altoid in Ross Ulbricht's Gmail account and compared computer journals, chats, and a spreadsheet with travel, purchase, email, and Facebook records. The comparisons included matching language about statisticians and a laptop purchase. Outside the jury's presence, the court upheld authentication of challenged documents but said they were not admitted for their truth. It allowed contextual readings subject to cumulative-use limits and requested support for the government's computer-generated-statement theory. The court later found a sufficient authentication foundation for the hard drive. Snow prompted a noon ending and cancellation of the following day's trial. Resumption was planned for January 28 at 10 a.m., subject to courthouse and juror travel conditions.