Comment by eruleman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eruleman | Hacker News Reader

Jake Chevinsky has a great Twitter thread about how Ross Ulbricht's sentencing was deeply unjust. [1]

Basically, the judge sentenced him for a crime that he wasn't convicted of (murder-for-hire): 'When she [the judge] gave him double life plus 40 years, she said the "murders significantly justified the life sentence."'

The most heartbreaking part of the story is the letter Ross read to the judge before sentencing:

"If you find my conviction warrants a sentence that allows for my eventual release, I will not lose my love for humanity during my years of imprisonment, . . .

I will do what I can to make up for not being there for the people I love, and to make the world a better place.

Even now I understand what a terrible mistake I made... I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age. Please leave a small light at the end of the tunnel ... a chance to redeem myself in the free world before I meet my maker."

https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1025008589080080384

Do you feel the evidence suggests he did not actually intend to commit the murder-for-hire?

But was he convicted of it? If not, shouldn’t be sentenced for it.

It seems to me that, if a judge is able to choose a sentence among multiple possible sentences given a particular conviction, this by definition means that the information the judge uses to make that decision comes from things other than what the person was convicted of.

I disagree. Leeway in sentencing is to allow the court to better match the severity of punishment to the severity of crime when someone is convicted of crime which can cover a wide variety of behavior. Not to punish someone for crimes they weren't convicted of.

Severity of drug crimes tend to have to do with volume (Ross' was vast) and also things like whether weapons or violence was involved.

You don't have to be convicted of attempted murder for hire to have evidence that you were attempting to commit murder for hire in your drug case. The judge can surely use evidence presented in the case to decide severity.

Not according to the US Constitution:

> The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits increasing the maximum authorized sentence for an offense based on a fact not found by a jury.[1]

You're arguing the judge can essentially ignore the jury's findings on the case, which is the same as not having a jury.

And in this case, the prosecution didn't even bring an indictment for that particular crime. Allowing a judge to both decide which crimes were committed and who is guilty of committing them is not a great idea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_constitutional_s...

Did the judge increase the maximum authorized sentence? I don't think so. She gave the maximum allowable sentence.

Was the detail of Albricht trying to hire someone to murder someone else not brought up in the case at all?

You don't have to be charged with attempted murder for that evidence to come up in your drug dealer trial.

My understanding is that the murder-for-hire scheme was suggested by someone acting at the direction of law enforcement at the time. Furthermore, my understanding is that this person repeatedly pressured Ross before Ross gave in and ordered the hit. It sounds like the classic definition of entrapment. Law enforcement shouldn't be allowed to create a would-be-murderer and then prosecute them for essentially being easily manipulated.

I haven't followed the case, and I probably have some details wrong, but it sounds like the prosecution intentionally split the murder charge into a separate trial to be run later because the entrapment defense would have cast doubt on the other charges. (To be clear, my limited understanding leads me to think that Ross was probably guilty of the 4 charges under which he was convicted.) They likely probably never intended to prosecute the murder-for-trial charges except as a backup if they lost the primary trial. The entrapment defense just looks way too easy.

With enough determination and skill you can manipulate any person into anything. That's why I think his sentence doesn't serve justice but it is to send a message. Awful, awful chapter of the US justice history.

Let a jury decide that.

I've looked closely at the evidence and anyone who was familiar with it would conclude that he absolutely did intend to have people killed, and even believed he was doing it and had done it. And it wasn't just the federal agents entrapping him, there were 2 other agreements to kill 5 other people with another entity that was not a federal agent, but was scamming him out of money and the people did not exist.

But that's not what he was charged with and that's not what he was convicted of, so he shouldn't be serving time for it. If you want him on those charges charge him with those crimes.

Interesting. Were those 2 other agreements before or after the one suggested and pressured by the law enforcement asset? If those other agreements came later, there's an argument to be made that they were also an indirect result of the actions of the pressure by the law enforcement asset. I would guess there's no precedent for an indirect entrapment defense, but I'd consider it a mitigating circumstance for sentencing purposes.

In any case, I agree it seems fundamentally against the rule of law to punish people for crimes they haven't been convicted of.

Yes, they occurred after the contract with the federal agent.

However, the reason charges were dropped on those was because nobody was actually killed, the people he paid to have killed didn't actually exist, and the prosecutors determined that prosecuting him for crimes where no victims ever even existed would hurt their chances with a jury on the other charges.

Why did he arrange to get people that didn’t exist killed?

It's a long story, but basically there was a guy who would pump up vendor accounts and exit scam them, then he attempted to extort the site admin (DPR) with customer data using some story that he owed some real bad dudes a a lot of money, and when the admin tried to contact these real bad dudes about resolving it, he also asked them about selling on site and also taking care of this mutual problem. The real bad dudes agreed to handle the mutual problem for a fee, and DPR paid.

Of course, the scammer and the real bad dudes were the same guy, and he managed to turn an extortion into a murder for hire of himself and some fictional associates, and made off with just under a million dollars at the time, not counting what he made scamming customers and also not counting future price increase.

DPR, the criminal mastermind that he was, fell for it, never put it together, and paid. He legitimately thought all these names were different people and actually existed. I don't believe he even found out he got scammed until he was in jail facing charges and the scammer was caught for some other unrelated crimes.

Is there an article we could read? Sounds fascinating.

Read (or listen to) American Kingpin by Nick Bilton. It is a great story.

https://www.audible.com/pd/American-Kingpin-Audiobook/B06Y1R...

I read a bit on various articles after commenting first time. I was very amused seeing he transferred thousands of BTC for one hit. For one hit it was roughly 1600 BTC at 60 USD. Bitcoin now stands over 20 000 USD so in todays BTC dollars that was a 32 million fake hit.

The person blackmailing him and Curtis Green did exist, though. He also received a staged photo of the real Curtis Green, who appeared to be dead and covered in real blood. He definitely thought he killed at least some real people, even if no one died.

Yes, the contract that was arranged by a federal agent did have a real person involved.

The person blackmailing him was the person who he contracted to do the deed, and the name he had for the blackmailer was not a real person, 3 of the people never even were named in any way and did not exist either.

He did think he had killed a total (that we know of) of 6 people, which to me would be enough for soliciting murder if I were on a jury. But a defense would be very strong in a case like that, and a prosecutor unlikely to convince 12 jurors.

This is fair. I also 99.99% believe he intended to kill people and that he thought he had succeeded, but, yeah, it's odd that he was sentenced for something he wasn't charged with.

Personally, I'd prefer his sentence be fully commuted, and then prosecutors actually charge him with at least some of the murders-for-hire, a jury convicts him, and a judge re-sentences him to life in prison for those offenses.

That would be proper justice, I think. I think they could likely win the case despite the crooked cop (who was only involved in one of the five alleged attempted murders-for-hire). In my view, he shares the exact narcissistic and psychopathic mentality of any Escobar or Guzman: "if you come in my way, you forfeit your life".

Not only was he not convicted for it, but the charge was dropped.

not only dropped, but dropped with prejudice.

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