this guy is much smarter than mentioned on the internet i'm convinced of that lol
I don't know what this says about his intelligence overall. My guess is that he's an above-average intelligence guy who is in denial about how his future is outside his control, so he is frantically floundering in a futile attempt to regain control. I think I'd probably feel the same way in that situation, however I'd probably listen to people on my side (lawyers, parents ... or lawyer-parents) if they told me "shut up, stop talking, you're making everything worse"
He’s turning what could’ve been a 10-15 year prison sentence into a 20+ one.
By that logic, if you're looking at life and upset the judge, you should be let go?
> This just tells me the justice system is fucked.
It's not. It's based on the moral that people who made a mistake and regret it (or at least plea to change) are less bad than people who did something wrong and continue to refuse to even accept it being something wrong. You can also frame it as them being 'closer' to living a good life and therefore needing less punishment to get them to actually be good, though technically punishments also have the secondary effects of determent and protecting society.
This makes no sense at all. You can't impose much punishment past life; I was never proposing SUBTRACTING time for offending the judge just not adding it. I'm baffled by your logic. I was comparing the above offered differences of life to 10 years, which the difference of the two is life minus 10.
>It's based on the moral that people who made a mistake and regret it (or at least plea to change) are less bad than people who did something wrong and continue to refuse to even accept it being something wrong.
The law isn't about bad and good though. Growing a pot plant could possibly be "not bad" but still be illegal. Selling a prescription opiate in some circumstances may be "bad" but legal. The law is in essence a description of punishments for behaviors that may or may not have objective connection to good or bad. Also I reject the thesis that 10 years versus something more must make them more "good" and in fact hypothesize it may have the opposite effect.
IMO the judge should be objective purveyors of the law. Your 1A opinion to whether your breaking of the law was good or bad should be irrelevent to senencing. If somebody says "fuck the law and I'd be happy to do it again" even regarding events of horrible violence IMO should be first amendment protected speech free from additional punishment. Of course these are mere opinions, and not to suggest yours is wrong.
He was basically caught with his pants down - logged into SR mastermind account and his laptop was full of incriminating evidence. And after all that he still said that he was not the DPR and didn't own the SR server.
His offence level was off the charts and he treated everyone as if they were idiots. Why would the judge be lenient after all that?
Honestly it's pretty hilarious to note the government was like "look, it's violent because the government arrived and offered violence." Hopefully they locked away the officials and the informants/undercovers offering this violence as well, if indeed it is to be treated as genuine violence.
The other 5 were organised by a Canadian scammer who also stole a lot of money from Silk Road customers. The whole case is hilarious. Some dude goes to SR and robs his customers blind. And then he approaches the site admin, pretends to be a Hell's Angels member and offers to kill the scammer for money. And then steals that money too. Oh and if I recall correctly - he then asked Ross for some money up front and promised to sell a large amount of drugs on SR. He stole that money too and disappeared.
So even if we consider that one murder to be entrapment. Ross is still guilty of the other 5, because law enforcement wasn't involved in those in any way.
Paying for 5 murders to other criminals makes you a violent criminal. Even if those other criminals turn out to be scammers.
What conviction found he must have been involved in the murder scheme? I know his conspiracies alleged that could have been a possible overt act, but did the jury actually ever convict him on anything involving murder or state the overt act for the various generic conspiracies was actually the murder allegation?
As far as I can tell the prosecutor said, here is a list of a bunch of possible acts that cover the more generic drug and kingpin conspiracies. And the jury found him guilty that at least some of those happened, but not necessarily the murder-for-hire one. He wasn't found guilty of an actual charge that required murder. It looks like the judge just short-circuited to sentencing him for it despite as far as I can tell no evidence that's what the jury convicted him of.
I find it pretty chilling you can just use a generic conspiracy charge, have the prosecutor say "coulda done any one of those things" and the jury say "well he did at least one of those things, not necessarily the murder bit" and the judge just short-circuit to sentencing like he was guilty of paying for the hit. If the charge is so vague as to not know which elements of the crime he actually guilty of then IMO the sentencing should not be able to presume it must have been the worst thing the prosecutor alleged.
If you're convicted of a crime that carries, say, 1 to 3 years in prison then the judge could not sentence you to anything more than that. So even if you had some weird murder for hire chats on your computer - you would still get 3 years max.
Mitigating and aggravating factors don't have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
So the moral of the story is - if you do something illegal - don't commit violent acts as part of it. Judges really don't like that.
Alcohol and cigarette vendors aren't allowed to sell their goods to minors. If they do that - they can be punished and the minor who bought that stuff is considered a victim.
So it's no different with SR and other illegal markets.
SR is actually worse than street dealers, because at least some of them refuse to sell drugs to children.
"assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Howard, who was co-responsible for prosecuting the case, testified that no such plea offer existed. He further testified that the only plea offer had been made before Ulbricht's indictment. The plea offer had required Ulbricht to plead guilty to charges 'carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with a recommended United States Sentencing Guidelines range of life imprisonment'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Motion_to_vacate...
As I understand - they offered him a deal that included drug distribution charges carrying a 10 year minimum (but not necessarily life). And when he refused and chose to go to trial instead then they added the infamous Continious Criminal Enterprise charge - AKA the Kingpin charge that carries a 20 year minimum. That's usually reserved for mafia and cartel bosses not ordinary drug dealers.
I got this info from Nick Bilton who wrote American Kingpin and researched this case extensively.
It's just insane to me the government was like, "look, when us and our informants showed up shit got violent! And hey he was convicted on a conspiracy that could include murder as a overt act no matter that the jury was never required to indicate that was the overt act on which they convicted but fuck it we'll use it in the sentencing"
Regarding your statement. I think both are wrong. If agreeing to pay someone for murder is real violence, then so is offering murder. Both the cop and the one paying should be jailed.
Someone who orders and pays for murder wants someone to be killed.
But a scammer/cop who doesn't want to kill anyone in the first place can't be guilty of murder. And they aren't violent, because they haven't committed any violent crimes.
At most they have committed fraud. But as I understand - illegal contracts are unenforciable. You can't sue someone for not doing something illegal on your behalf.
So idk if it even counts as fraud if the contract is legally void in the first place.
I guess the SBF analogy would be something about other shitcoins staying afloat during a wider crash.
[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dC7mP5nSwvpL65Qu5/why-the-ta...