Still in for life without parole.
The crime isn’t that you did something wrong. It’s that you didn’t make the right person richer by doing so.
Your fatalism only shuts down the discourse of workable solutions. You may as well be a shill for "the man" as you're working for the status quo agenda holding this attitude.
Your moral cry for the small time user is in alignment with me though. I'd decriminalize low amount possession and drug use since locking up drug users almost certainly pushes people who are vulnerable to collapse into definitely collapsed positions.
A civilized people would want the road to success to be the incentivized over pushing people down who are then unable to escape (statistically).
Selling drugs in large quantities isn't inherently unethical or immoral.
Trying to hire a hit man to have someone else murdered in an incredibly specific and graphic way, on the other hand, is inherently both unethical and immoral.
But is it worth a life sentence if the murders never happened? I think there's a reasonable case for "no."
> All the evidence shows that you viewed Silk Road both as above the law and the laws didn't apply, and in this context also very dangerous.
> Your own words I have looked at very carefully and I have reread certainly more than once in this whole process. They reveal a kind of an arrogance and they display an intent that is very important to the Court's determination, [...]
https://www.scribd.com/doc/283722300/Ross-Ulbricht-Sentencin...
He should have teamed up with the Sacklers
Not only that (shouldn't consider outside claims that haven't been evaluated by the jury). The DEA withheld evidence that he could have used in his defense and later DEA agents went to jail for corruption (attempting to steal funds and it appeared setting him up).
Further, there wasn't a warrant for his records; they just took them and monitored his traffic. SCOTUS refused to hear the case (doesn't mean it was reasonable or not, they have discretion to skip stuff).
Many people (myself included) believe the government officials in this case were attempting to steal the funds and set him up to take a fall so they can take the funds for themselves.
A lot of this can be actually seen on the wikipedia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
It was part of the trial, as part of the case to prove one of the conspiracy charges.
[0] https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-for-hire...
[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-ste...
> The Court must determine whether these allegations have been demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence and I find that there is ample and unambiguous evidence that Ulbricht commissioned five murders as part of his efforts to protect his criminal enterprise and that he paid for these murders. [...] The Court finds that the evidence is clear and unambiguous and it far exceeds the necessary preponderance findings
This is a criminal trial, not a civil one. Preponderance is not sufficient. No witnesses could say that Ross = DPR in these messages, and the recipient of these messages is... an unreliable narrator at best.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/silk-roads-alleg...
And "without parole" is a meaningless thing in Federal prison since there is no parole. If you commit Federal crimes, you get to do Federal sentences.
See page 20 onwards for the evidence that the judge weighed about the ordered hits: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/17/17A559/20426/20171...
Just say that you agree with them. You don't have to angrily pretend like you are disagreeing. You agree completely, 100% that those charges got dropped.
So the gov couldn’t prove its case but it still gets to use that data for sentencing?
The judge weighed the evidence, weighed Ulbricht’s lawyers’ responses and found a preponderance of evidence that he did indeed order the hits which enhanced (extended) the sentence he was given.
It’s been awhile since I looked at the transcripts but at the time I couldn’t believe how bad his lawyers were. They offered almost no reply to damning accusation after damning accusation.
You are being deprived of life/liberty at sentencing, if the judge can use information/"accusations" that the government failed to prove then you are being punished without conviction.
Ross Ulbricht's Murder-for-Hire Charges Dropped by U.S. Attorney https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-for-hire...
The conspiracy charges were related to computer hacking and trafficking narcotics, not murder-for-hire which from all the evidences presented was a scheme set up to collect payments from him.
Dude didn't end up in jail for murder, because the murder charges were dropped. D.R.O.P.P.E.D. Words have meanings and you are twisting them.
You are going to have a hard time getting me to take an opinion piece that commits a factual error that refutes its premise more seriously than the actual source documents that contradict it.
Yes they did charge them, and then dropped them. That's what happened. Charges and convictions are not the same concept, and it's quite amusing you have the galls to say anyone else is "wrong".
I don't know if there was some other more overt "murder" charge that he had that was later dropped (I only see the original and the superseding indictment). But if that happened, the only material implication of it is that they changed the structure of how they charged the murder-for-hire scheme. They did not give up on that charge; in a significant sense, they bet (and won) their case on it --- as the sentencing memoranda point out as well.
This thread is an interesting example of how powerful the Internet folklore about Ulbricht is. Like, it stands up against the primary source documents of a conviction and sentencing! The sentencing documents must be what's wrong, not the Reason article! It's pretty fascinating, just sociologically.
I imagine this is just self defense mechanism at work - if you concede to the reality that a libertarian drug utopia took around 3 years to devolve into cliche South American narco violence, you'll end up with that oh-so-uncomfortable step of having to revisit your worldviews.
All those libertarian manifestos that Ulbricht dabbled in are just a marketing veneer of the stereotypical criminal organization.
Ulbricht wasn't living in a utopia, nor are many people going to argue his acts perfectly reflect some vague notion of any utopia.
Nowhere in that opinion piece does it backup its titles assertion nor link to any of the legal documents. Basically op is arguing based on storytelling not law.
The two taken together could be construed as entrapment, but the charges were dropped so there isn't a conclusive answer.
yet he's step brother is still free. its a mystery.