Martin Shkreli’s legal team is facing an unexpected consequence of the former pharma bro’s efforts to turn himself into an internet supervillain: Their total inability to find prospective jurors who don’t hate the dude on sight.
Shkreli is currently facing several charges of fraud related to a pair of hedge funds he managed in 2009 and 2014, some of which carry sentences of up to 20 years in jail. But his lawyers are struggling to find members of the jury pool who haven’t either heard of him and his various antisocial stunts (like raising the price of a drug useful in controlling symptoms of HIV by 5000 percent, or holding a rare Wu-Tang Clan album hostage), or who simply react to his shit-eating grin and attention-seeking behavior with instinctual unease. (One juror reportedly told the defense that, “I looked right at him and, in my head, I said ‘That’s a snake.’”)
Some jurors are even blaming Shkreli for stuff he didn’t actually do: Three said they disliked him for raising the price of the Epipen, which was actually done by Mylan CEO Heather Bresch. It just goes to show: You can’t get a fair trial in America, especially when you’ve spent the years immediately prior to it meticulously crafting an image of yourself as an obnoxious piece of shit.