How CNBC reported the Sam Bankman-Fried trial

Just before 8 p.m. on Thursday, 12 jurors found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of all seven counts against him. You could have heard a pin drop in the courtroom as the forewoman repeated the word “guilty” seven times in a row into a handheld microphone.

Bankman-Fried stood facing the jury box, neither flinching nor betraying any sort of emotion. In less than three hours of deliberation, jurors had swiftly come to the conclusion that Bankman-Fried had defrauded FTX customers, as well as lenders to its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial was held in room 26b on the top floor of 500 Pearl Street, one of two federal courthouses of the Southern District of New York. The building fast became the de facto headquarters for many journalists over the last five weeks.

The courthouse had a few hard-and-fast rules, and a number of looser guidelines depending on who was on duty.

The big non-negotiable was no electronics in the courthouse. There were certain workarounds, like having a seat in the media room, which required your publication to have covered around half a dozen SDNY cases. There, you have access to electricity and internet, an absolute game changer when every second counts. (CNBC put out a note requesting access ahead of the trial — an email which was ultimately ignored.)

The second workaround involved borrowing the resources of CNBC’s capable and kind television photographers. Stashing a backpack with electronics in a car parked on Pearl Street made it possible to sprint from the courtroom to the car, then to a nearby park bench, where this CNBC writer could type and dispatch notes to editors in San Francisco. A 65-watt power bank compatible with a USB-C laptop charging cord proved essential to the operation.

As the days grew colder, it was essential to have a seat in a car to keep your fingers warm. Every exit to file a report included another…