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.
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...
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.
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.
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.