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Martin Shkreli Says He Will Not Take the Stand in His Defense

Martin Shkreli arriving at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn last week.Credit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Martin Shkreli said in court Monday that he would not testify in his own defense in his fraud trial, a turnabout from as recently as last week, when his lawyers told a judge that he had “insisted” on testifying.

The decision not to testify means that a large swath of Mr. Shkreli’s life, from his needling tweets to his decision in 2015 to raise the price on a drug for infectious disease to $750 a tablet from $13.50 overnight, will be kept out of the trial.

It is rare and risky for a defendant to take the stand in his own defense because it can allow in evidence that would otherwise be kept out. It also gives prosecutors a clear shot at the defendant in cross-examination, giving them an opportunity to trip him up, anger him or otherwise undermine his credibility.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees defendants the right not to testify against themselves in criminal trials. The judge overseeing the trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, Kiyo A. Matsumoto, said on Monday that she would tell jurors not to infer anything from Mr. Shkreli’s decision. The judge also said that she would tell them not to even discuss it during deliberations.

Mr. Shkreli is charged with eight counts of wire and securities fraud, stemming from his time running two hedge funds and a subsequent pharmaceutical company, Retrophin.

His decision means that jury members who knew nothing about him before the trial starting five weeks earlier — and virtually all potential jurors who indicated they knew about the defendant, or followed him on social media, were dismissed during jury selection — will retain a narrow perspective on Mr. Shkreli.

His personality out of court can be volatile. He bought the domain names of journalists who have written about him, he has been repeatedly banned from Twitter for violating its terms of services, and he was ordered by Judge Matsumoto to stop talking in and around court during the trial after he spouted off to reporters.

In court, only a few hints of his turbulent personality have come through, mostly in a handful of emails, and in a letter he sent to the wife of a former employee in which he said he would like to see her and her children homeless.

At trial, Mr. Shkreli’s lawyers have tried to portray him as eccentric, so obsessed with pharmaceutical research that he slept in a sleeping bag at his office.

On Monday, Judge Matsumoto asked the lawyers whether Mr. Shkreli had decided to testify.

He “is not going to testify,” said Benjamin Brafman, one of his lawyers.

The judge then asked Mr. Shkreli, who stood up, four questions about whether he had consulted with his lawyers and understood his rights and whether this decision was his alone.

“Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes.” “Correct,” Mr. Shkreli said.

Had Mr. Shkreli testified, prosecutors had warned, his behavior with drug pricing could come into play.

Mr. Brafman said at a different point during jury selection that drug pricing, should it become an issue, was “the elephant in the room; pharmaceutical pricing may be the single most important issue we have to confront.”

Prosecutors will most likely conclude their case on Tuesday.

Defense lawyers did not say Monday how long they expect the defense case to be. Last Wednesday, Mr. Brafman told Judge Matsumoto that the length of the defense case “will depend on Mr. Shkreli, who has at this point insisted on testifying, and we have to have a long conversation scheduled with him for tomorrow to discuss that.”

If Mr. Shkreli did not testify, Mr. Brafman said, “there may be no defense case.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Shkreli Decides Against Testifying In His Own Defense in Fraud Trial. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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