It's not particularly clear they could have had it thrown out in anycase. And even if they did, there was more than enough information just on the laptop to ti

It's not particularly clear they could have had it thrown out in anycase. And even if they did, there was more than enough information just on the laptop to tie him conclusively to Silk Road. So his lawyer threw a Hail Mary and decided to try and deny Ross owned the server at all. It didn't work, but going the other route wouldn't have either. I suspect a lot of the people who were pressing for Ross to challenge the seizure of the server are doing so because they're interested in the legal questions involved, rather than maximizing the chances of an innocence verdict. But in anycase, you generally can't get a re-trial based on incompetent counsel based just on strategic decisions, even if those decisions were poor ones. You need to show your lawyer was really asleep at the switch on a basic level, like giving the client factually wrong information, or going off to Cancun for a couple weeks instead of preparing a defence.