“Your Honor, finding love with Martin was a great joy for me.”
In April the journalist Christie Smythe wrote those words to a federal judge about Martin Shkreli, the widely vilified former pharmaceutical executive who is serving a seven-year sentence on a fraud conviction.
Ms. Smythe, 37, wrote to Judge Kiyo Matsumoto of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on April 14 as part of an emergency motion filed by Mr. Shkreli’s lawyers requesting a compassionate release. They argued that Mr. Shkreli, who gained infamy for raising the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000 percent, would be able to work on a cure for Covid-19 and could avoid contracting the virus himself if he were released from prison.