The US criminal justice system is supposed to presume someone is innocent until proven guilty. He was never convicted of the murder-for-hire but yet it was taken into account for his sentencing. That is not right and short-circuits due process.
Shaun Bridges of the US secret service and Carl Force of the US DEA were siphoning bitcoin off to their personal accounts throughout the investigation. Bridges even tried to flee the country while on bail.
Think what you want about Ulbrict, but the cops that took him down were every bit as dirty as he was, if not more.
Obviously the agents who stole the funds were dirty, but the contents of your first paragraph is called a criminal investigation. Nothing untoward there (as described, at least).
For my 2 cents it seems entirely reasonable that an armed gang backed by the state would consider themselves to be individually above the law, since they are constantly told that the ends always justify the means, no matter how odious those means may be.
If a journalist or academic gets found to have knowingly fabricated even the smallest detail it immediately calls into question their entire body of work, and even colleagues they may have worked with.
These are federal agents and the best standard we can hold them to is "oh, we don't have direct evidence of other crimes so we'll just assume the first time we caught you was the first time you did it"
They sold him details of the case for bitcoin into their personal wallets. It wasn't part of a sting or intel operation. The same cops that built the case against him were themselves indicted for money laundering payments they received from Ross. Multiple independent agencies and field offices with rogue agents undermining the cases they were building in real time for personal gain that was contemporaneously worth less than a million dollars.
We don't allow it from cops (they're going to jail). In the case of these two cops, it's not clear what you want. From what I can tell, they weren't allowed to testify, and they gathered none of the evidence used to convict him. Instead, that evidence was to be used in another trial on different charges and the government dropped those charges because the cops were unreliable.
Here's the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy...
Page 5 of the indictment includes the murder-for-hire activity as part of the first count ("Narcotics trafficking conspiracy"). Ulbricht was convicted on this count of the indictment.
Here is Ulbricht's appeal against sentence to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html
Ulbricht doesn't even bother arguing that the court was wrong in considering the murder-for-hire during sentencing, only that they shouldn't merit a life sentence because they probably didn't actually take place.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html#foot...
Later
I removed ", and bets more of the case on it.", to dial it back a little.
What you're doing here is presenting the indictment with the murder-for-hire as overt acts and relying on the sleight of hand that the reader will assume the conviction asserts the overt acts, when in fact the conviction only generally relies on at least one overt act (and need not be any murder-for-hire related one).
For a criminal conviction, the standard is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".
For sentencing, judges can consider evidence under a different standard, "preponderance of the evidence". As prosecutors introduced evidence of the murder-for-hire allegations in trial, the judge was permitted to consider it.
Clearly he didn’t just build a drug website, he was fine ending lives for it. A slap on the wrist (even if his family thinks he is a good guy) wouldn’t deter him much, it would seem.
And the first judge very much agreed with your assessment.
[1]: https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Sentencing_2...
If a defendant has been convicted and then goes on to hold the court publicly in contempt gets a harsher sentence than someone who is truly reticent and has taken actions to attempt to restore their victims even before sentencing.. I don't see how justice has been unequally applied. The two defendants _are_ unequal. That's the point.
Now I understand your position and even agree with it to a point, the idea that justice is blind means judgment is without consideration of undue influence.
Like many things, balance is the best approach. Minimum sentences came about when the prior sentences were perceived to be unreasonable.
Don’t get me started on prison reform, though. Blind or not, US prisons are inherently unconstitutional.
True, but I see a bigger problem with sentencing being based on conduct that the defendant was acquitted of. The concept is supposed to be that if you were acquitted, you didn't commit the crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-hire_...
>>> Sentencing has always had unprovable stuff considered.
But still, looking outside this trial, sentences being handed out based on acquitted conduct is very much a thing that happens, and it shouldn't be allowed.
The standard for conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt". The standard for something to be considered in sentencing is "perponderance of the evidence".
As such, it's possible for a judge to take a look at a case where a conviction couldn't be obtained, but consider the evidence to be compelling enough to use in sentencing for something else.
And it's not relevant anyway. Once you're acquitted, you didn't commit the crime. Hazy evidence that you did commit the crime might be something the sentencing judge can legitimately consider, but it's necessarily overruled by the fact that you didn't commit the crime, which is something the sentencing judge must consider.
No. "Not guilty" is not the same as "innocent".
Not guilty means they could not prove you committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt; that it's possible that you're innocent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence is a useful resource for understanding why a person is innocent unless and until they have been proven guilty.
It is surprising that this is even a matter of debate. This is a basic fact taught as part of U.S. compulsory education.
That's true, but that's not relevant, because that's not the scenario. The standard for criminal conviction is not the standard for “to claim that you did this”, it is the standard to determine the maximum legal criminal punishment.
The standard for a judge to assign punishment within the range specified by the statute under which a person was convicted is lower, because by definition the facts which allow the maximum sentence in that range have been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
> Once you're acquitted, you didn't commit the crime
Legally “didn’t commit the crime” (and thus not allowing separate punishment for the crime) is not the same as “did not do something substantially similar to the crime“ (which therefore might be eligible for sanctions other than separate criminal punishment, such as enhancements within the statutorily authorized range of punishments for another crime, civil liability, or all kinds of different things.)
Heck, it doesn't even mean “did not commit a crime with substantially identical elements within the jurisdiction of a separate sovereign with concurrent jurisdiction”, though that's not directly relevant to this case.
I don't think you'll find many people arguing that this is a state of affairs that makes any sense. My position in this thread takes the form "the justice system is doing something that is self-evidently insane". And that's also what I would say here. Being insane in one way doesn't stop you from being insane in another way.
> The standard for criminal conviction is not the standard for “to claim that you did this”
And this just isn't true. The standard for making the claim is the standard for conviction. As far as the law is concerned, the conviction is how you make the claim. As a person, if you make the claim in the absence of a conviction you'll run into serious legal problems. Unless, apparently, you're handing down a sentence for some other crime, in which case anything goes.
Again, this isn't true. The standard for evaluating a claim is different for conviction versus sentencing.
> As a person, if you make the claim in the absence of a conviction you'll run into serious legal problems.
No, you won't, at least not necessarily. Libel would be a civil action, and as with sentencing, the standard is lower in a civil trial. This is, for example, why OJ Simpson got acquitted in criminal court but was deemed culpable for the murders in civil court.
No, you won't. Heck, as a person, you can make the same claim in court and win a sizable payout based on it with evidence insufficient for a criminal conviction, even if the elements required for civil liability are identical to those for the crime, because the standard of evidence in a civil case is preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt like a criminal conviction.
The high burden of proof required for criminal conviction specifically exists as a narrow purpose failsafe that doesn't apply in other contexts even within the criminal justice system.
For example suppose I were convicted for reckless driving for driving 300% over the speed limit in a school zone while school was in session. That same evidence could have been used for a speeding charge instead of a reckless driving charge.
It would not be violating innocent until proven guilty or due process if my sentencing for reckless driving took into account my extremely high speed, even though I was not charged or convicted of speeding. My driving 300% over the speed limit was proven as part of convicting me for reckless driving and the court can treat my driving that fast as a fact.
In the Ulbricht case the murder-for-hire stuff was part of the basis for one of the conspiracy charges, evidence was heard for it in regards to that, and he was convicted on that charge. So the court can take it as a fact because of that and use it when considering the sentencing for that conviction.