That tends to happen when you create "The Amazon for drugs".
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...