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Comment by hamiltonians | Hacker News Reader

it's nuts. even murderers can get parole.no parole is a huge injustice

Yeah, but Ulbricht had multiple fake passports, and was assumed to have an unknown but enormous amount of hidden cash, and loyal contacts in lots of countries. Not to mention lots of experience living and traveling under a cover identity. He's a much bigger flight risk than a run-of-the-mill murderer.

Didn't he try to order a bunch of hits though?

Those charges were all dropped. There was likely intent on his side but no murder were conclusively proven to have taken place. I do believe he will be paroled/commuted eventually under another president, perhaps in another decade or so.

ya but he still tried to have people killed, and at one point, he thought the murder had taken place because the FBI sent a fake pic.

The charges were dropped due to the seriousness of the charges that remained (and the corrupt Fed that would complicate the matter) but the judge found sufficient evidence of intent to order the hits (e.g. messages specifically ordering the hits, sending payment for the hits in the amount of $650k in bitcoin from wallets found on his laptop, writing in his journal "I ordered some people killed" and "they were killed") that those attempted hits were used as a sentencing enhancement for the other charges he was found guilty of - namely the criminal conspiracy and maintaining a criminal enterprise.

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...

Wait, how can “evidence” you weren’t convicted with be used for sentencing of a crime you were convicted for?

So the gov couldn’t prove its case but it still gets to use that data for sentencing?

So the evidence proved their case for the main charges - as demonstrated by the jury’s guilty verdict. The government then provides a sentencing recommendation and Ross’s lawyers can dispute anything the government claims. The bar for the sentencing enhancements is “a preponderance of evidence” which is something akin to 51% vs guilty / not-guilty which requires the jury to be convinced “beyond a reasonable doubt” or closer to 100%.

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.

To me this seems like a fairly clear-cut constitutional violation.

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.

So then yes the charges got dropped.

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.

Facts sans context are utterly meaningless

Right, the original “goal” was to insist the charges were dropped so nobody should denigrate Ross using the fact that they were brought in the first place. Just pointing out that a Federal judge found a preponderance of evidence that he ordered the hits as based on his journal, the chat logs, and the Bitcoin transfers.

Those charges were not dropped. They were predicates of his conspiracy charge. The murders-for-hire were charged conduct, brought into the trial and rebuttable by the defense, and considered during sentencing.

Of the six murder indictments trumpeted by the U.S. government in the days following Ulbricht’s Oct. 2013 arrest, five have fallen off the table and the sixth sits untouched in a separate indictment (legalese for an unproven allegation) that was purposefully left out of the upcoming trial. https://www.dailydot.com/crime/silk-road-murder-charges-ross...

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.

It's right there in the (final, superseding) indictment, and in the PSR (I think? one of the sentencing filings). This isn't a big controversy for us to hash out; you can just go read it.

Dropped charges are dropped charges. It's right there in the title and rather baffling how you are glossing over them as if they are alien scriptures.

I'm literally staring at the superseding indictment right now. Page 7. Go look. He was charged, and those charges were not dropped. I don't know what title you're referring to.

That's a narcotics conspiracy charge, due to "intent to prevent the communication by the Employee to a law enforcement officer ofthe United States of information relating to the commission and possible commission of a Federal offense".

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.

See upthread, where I took the time to pull up a bunch of other drug kingpin indictments to find similar charging structures, and trivially found one (I'm staring at it, too). I'm sorry they didn't charge the murder-for-hire scheme the way you'd have preferred them to, but they certainly did charge it, and the Reason article you're citing is plainly, obviously, factually, irrefutably wrong. The article says "Those charges were no part of what Ulbricht was actually tried and sentenced for." Obviously, they were.

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.

>they certainly did charge 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".

Yeah, you're wrong. I think what's happening here is what Kasey said: you're working exclusively from stuff like this Reason article, which is plainly wrong, and I'm working from the PACER docket of the case, which, uh, isn't. He was convicted of the charge that included the murder-for-hire scheme as its predicate.

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.

>This thread is an interesting example of how powerful the Internet folklore about Ulbricht is.

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.

Wasn't it the FBI/DEA that offered the narco-violence? Kind of throws a wrench into your libertarian utopia claims, when the murder-for-hire is a result of state intervention.

The "intervention" here is setting up a murder-for-hire sting?

I'm referring to both the offering of murder for-hire by federal undercover/informants, as well as the government creating the concocted problem of the release of names for which they offer a violent solution. I don't think even in the indictment is there any murder-for-hire not offered by federal agents or informants.

That's the irony of it all - when faced with a real world issue of extortion and theft, given the opportunity the libertarian drug utopia solution matches the one of a Central American cartel.

All those libertarian manifestos that Ulbricht dabbled in are just a marketing veneer of the stereotypical criminal organization.

So far you've proven that FBI and DEA offers of murder for hire do not fit in line with 'Libertarian' utopia. I don't think anyone is contesting that.

Ulbricht wasn't living in a utopia, nor are many people going to argue his acts perfectly reflect some vague notion of any utopia.

The OP is referring to the reason article they linked to. They are not noting that said article is an opinion piece that is in a long running series advocating on behalf of Ulbricht via libertarian ideals not via the actual law.

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.

Those charges had some issues. He tried to arrange a hit on someone who he thought had stolen $800k in Bitcoin from him, but it turns out one of the FBI agents stole the money and framed someone else. There's also some accusations that the agents pushed him to order the hit.

The two taken together could be construed as entrapment, but the charges were dropped so there isn't a conclusive answer.

Congress banned parole for federal crimes back in 1987. If you get convicted in federal court you have to do the entire sentence.

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