Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I can't say I know every detail of the case but I don't recall anyone getting killed or even hurt by Mr. Ulbricht so in my mind the punishment does not fit the crime. IMHO the death penalty should be off the table completely (go Nebraska!) and life in prison reserved for only violent offenders. You can argue that he enabled people to harm themselves but I think that's stretching it. If people want to take drugs, even take too much drugs their going to get it somewhere. If drugs were legal and treatment of abuse the focus instead of punishment Silk Road wouldn't have existed in the first place.
Still, IMO it is reasonable to bring that up as a character issue.
http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-wa...
Basically, if the undercover cop suggests X and you say no. Then come on nobody will know, and you say no. And then they spend the next six weeks convincing you it's a good idea, then that's entrapment.
The issue is he was on a sting for over a year and that's plenty of time to cross the line.
Of note, asking several times and catching someone at a moment of weakness is not entrapment. So, if you have been clean for 10 years then you’re out of luck.
In general, entrapment is when the police convince you to commit a crime that you wouldn't have committed otherwise. So, if you want to kill your wife, and your friend (FBI agent) happens to say one day, "Hey, I do a little killing on the side, just for gits and shiggles," and you hire him, that's not entrapment.
In contrast, if the agent is manipulating you and saying, "Hey, your wife is going to divorce you and take your stuff. Killing her is the only way to prevent ruin" and slowly convincing you to do it, then that's entrapment.
Bottom line: Already predisposed to doing the crime and probably would have gone through with it if it hadn't been the police? You're screwed. In contrast, if you're normally completely innocent and the person has to convince you to commit the crime, it's entrapment.
I suspect it's more likely they wanted to convict him on just the SR charges because that's better publicity, but it’s still odd.
The prosecution brought this up at trial but he was not charged or convicted of this in the criminal trial.
Go Team 'Murica....
Even the most ardent proponent of full legalization usually acknowledges that many drugs are very harmful--they just believe the people should be free to do things even if they are harmful to themselves.
I generally support decriminalization or even legalization, but I would be reluctant to allow internet sales. I'd require sales to be through licensed dealers and in person, so that an addict cannot completely cut themselves off from human contact. Internet sales make drugs too easy.
Even as a proponent of full legalization I know that as little as a few minutes spent in water can kill someone, and often does.
Why people are allowed to casually dive into this toxic substance is beyond me. No licenses, no regulations, practically any body of water you can find you're allowed to jump into totally unsupervised.
Most places don't even have signs warning people of the danger, and worst yet, many children practice a dangerous activity called 'swimming' in this substance often daring each other as to who can drop the highest from a rope into a potentially fatal body of water.
Also, once you start drinking it you need to find at least 4 litres of this a day to keep from going into water withdrawl, commonly known as dehydration, this can happen in as little as 3 days with out your daily fix.
It's not true that areas unsafe for swimming are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. lifeguards) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like jumping into the water in a potentially unsafe place.
But that's all beside the point. Laws and rules do not exist in vacuum, and humans are not spherical cows of uniform density. Time and again history has proven that most people can handle exposure to water safely, while they can't handle being exposed to hard drugs. You can blame this on individual stupidity, but people don't have perfectly free will, and if this stupidity predictably touches big fractions of a population, it's time to mitigate it.
Neither do most drugs, especially most illegal drugs.
Many legal drugs do (the most addictive of all being nicotine), but that also doesn't matter and is besides the point.
These are health issues, not criminal issues.
Addicts suffering from water withdrawl often drink amounts that are unsafe for their health which is why marathon runners have to be given water adulterated with mind altering metals like sodium and highly toxic chlorine to make it safe for them to drink.
It's kind of insane that water addiction would drive people to ingest water in such vast amounts that you'd have to add chlorine and sodium to make it safer.
If you think places unsafe for swimming are marked I would hazard a guess that you haven't spent much time in the outdoors.
We talk about food addiction when people eat way too mcuh, not when people eat a proper amount to survive.
It's not true that products unsafe for smoking are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. physicians and filters) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like using tobacco in a potentially unsafe manner.
I believe that time and history has proven that prohibition solves little, where infrastructure to increase safety and effort put towards educating people results in "less harm" -- a much better outcome for all. Some people will make a harmful choice (e.g. heavy smoking, fast food diet, sedentary lifestyle, using chainsaws alone), but society as a whole should not be punished for the choices of the few.
The poster above me implied that Ulbricht's actions did not hurt anyone. Hence, harm from drugs is relevant, because Ulbricht was selling drugs.
Ulbricht was not selling water, so whether or not water is harmful is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that Ulbricht is not going to jail for "running a website".
In regards to the harm from drugs-- I'd add the obvious point that prohibition comes with a really high cost.
I recently did dry-january and I was really happy with the results of cutting back on my drinking. I wake up more rested, and had more energy in the evenings. I've been thinking that going totally dry might be a good thing to do in my life.
But would I make alcohol, one of the top killers in america, illegal? (ref: http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm ) Absolutely not. If you went to US high school you know why--- alcohol-dealing gangs took over. People turned to bad products (wood alcohol, that potentially included methanol) to get their alcohol fix. I imagine we needlessly jailed a lot of alcohol drinkers and pushers.
A more indepth analysis of alcohol prohibition: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html
Why does the general public consider drug prohibition to be that much different than alcohol prohibition??
Because they have been told by the media, over and over, for decades. At least that's my theory. Consider how often the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is used in the general context of substance-based addiction.
Because it is socially accepted. Being a connoisseur of fine wines or whiskey is something many people consider sophisticated. Being a connoisseur of, say psychedelics or stimulants is, apparently a criminal offense.
Alcohol has a long tradition in the western civilization, so people feel somewhat comfortable with that. Other drugs probably seem very new and scary to the average guy.
There is a feedback cycle, where the media both manipulates and responds to public opinion.
According to The Federal Bureau of Prisons: - 48.7% of prisoners are in for drug related offenses
Apparently a large number (12.3-27.3%) are for Marijuana related offenses.
See http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offens...
The average IQ of most western countries, including the US, is around 100. That's probably significantly lower than the average reader here on Hacker News. I'm not sure if a person with an IQ of 100 ever asks themselves intelligent questions like yours...
Also you're assuming some sort of strong correlation between IQ or some other measure of intelligence and good political judgement.
Considering that many smart people believe in opposing ideologies, many of those being extreme and some which I think are really stupid, I can't believe that. I'd consider empathy and open-mindedness much more likely to correlate with support for good policies. Also people tend to disagree on what policies are good. People disagree on what good basic principles are, what the likely outcomes are, and whether those outcomes are good or not. There is disagreement even among smart people, even after the stupidity of much of the drug war.
IQ attempts to measure the speed of the brain, via a proxy designed by humans who probably on average think a bit highly of their own intelligence. No risk of cognitive bias there....
That said, in my mind short of violent action, I find it hard to see how having to serve more than two decades in prison is any kind of justice for any kind of non-violent crime. I also find that seeing the U.S. prison population at near 1% is rather depressing, and that most drugs probably shouldn't be criminalized and their use are more representative of other social issues at hand.
When black markets exist to the extent that the drug trade does, it usually indicates that the law is probably wrong. A black market for anything will always exist, but when you're starting to see it affect even 1% of the population as it does in this case, that should indicate that legally, the position should change in a way that reduces the need for such markets. However, time and time again governments try to push in the other direction, the U.S. revolution from England is in a large part based on this.
Bernie Madoff got 150 years.
Drugs, like spoons, hurt people. Some other items that kill people include:
Cars. Motorcycles. Trees. Water. Too much air. Too little air. People. Dogs. Sticks. Bath tubs. Guns.
In the end, drugs are no more inherently harmful than any of the items listed above.
What usually kills people, however, is not drugs, but things associated with drugs that exist only because we have decided they should exist:
- Drug gangs and cartels and the violence associated with them are the product of US government policy, not drugs.
- Drug overdoses are the product of US government policy, not drugs (in most cases), because especially with illegal drugs people don't know what they're getting or how much of it or how to use it.
It is primarily we that kill people. Look around you. If you see a face that supports the drug war, that person is partially guilty in all drug related deaths.
The irony of this case is that Judge Katherine Forrest is now much more responsible for the drug-related deaths she is trying to prevent.
Maple syrup may not have been a good example http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics
Here is an in-kind rebuttal to your link: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-turtles
People ruin their lives pretty well currently with highly addictive drugs, and I don't see how increasing supply would stop that from happening.
You can be clever that sticks kill people all you want, but that's completely sidestepping why people are worried about drug legalization: many drugs have extremely well documented negative effects on people, and these effects end up affecting others as well (hence "no smoking in public places'-style laws), and it has a real cost to society (hospitalisation, and just the human cost). Last I checked Sticks aren't that costly to civilisation in recent times.
Trying to be clever with semantics won't convince anyone of anything.
I don't see how prohibition and the War on Drugs prevented them from happening too. All that was achieved by the War on Drugs was a massive waste of taxpayer money[0], the creation of a large, organised, violent and powerful criminal underground[1], filling up of prisons with non-violent offenders[2], denying treatment to millions of addicts and treating them like criminals, and the violation of the rights, freedoms and liberties of large numbers of innocent people[3].
[0]-
1) http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v...
2) http://www.drugpolicy.org/wasted-tax-dollars
3) http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on...
[1]- http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/Crime-brief...
[2]- http://www.ibtimes.com/drug-offenses-not-violent-crime-filli...
[3]-
1) http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/balko_w...
2) http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/26290903/police-militariz...
3) http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10826084.2015.1...
If you actually want to convince people on the fence (GP's comment is clearly meant only for the audience of those already convinced), it's more important to actually use convincing arguments. "Sticks hurt people" convinces no one.
I agree that drug sales should be regulated but that doesn't in any way make sentencing someone to life in prison for running a website any less fucked up.
The following applies only to the US. Since 1968 you need a license granted by the federal government to sell guns (https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/who-can-obtain-federal-firea...). The law allowing you to carry a firearm was passed in 1791. Driver's licenses have been around since 1899. You can't sell a car to someone without one.
When thinking about this issue, I've found the following thought experiments useful:
(1) Should someone who ran a multi-million dollar illegal gun operation get life in prison, even though unlike drugs, the right to own firearms is explicitly protected by the Constitution?
(2) Should someone who ran a multi-million dollar website selling only weed in legal venues (Colorado, etc) be convicted of any crime, never-mind sentenced to life in prison, even though it is against federal law?
Personally I answer (1) as YES and (2) as NO, and place Ulbricht's conduct significantly closer to (1) than to (2).
Honestly, I can't tell if this block is because I'm conflating the context of the greater discussion (the Ulbricht trial) with the more nuanced points of timsally's comment.
Thanks!
You most certainly can. And it's completely legal. Driver's licenses have nothing to do with buying and selling vehicles. Some (all?) dealers might not do it, but there's other reasons besides legality for them to worry about.
When car or gun buying addiction becomes more then a negligible problem, you'll have a terrific point.
In human geography terms it simply means that giving up cars is a supremely difficult thing for society to do - particularly in some Western areas that are designed around the idea that all people have cars available [cheaply].
This has enough similarity to addiction that people use "addicted" commonly like this - "I'm addicted to coffee" or "I'm addicted to chocolate" usually just means you'd find it hard to give it up. [I don't know if clinically those statements are true for some though.]
As it happens I've given up alcohol, chocolate, coffee, videogames, and cars at various points and the car was definitely the hardest requiring the most change in my lifestyle.
Disagree with your definition of addicted
>Disagree with your definition of addicted //
I made pains to show that "addicted" was being used metaphorically. I was describing common use not presenting an alternate definition. That said the roots of the word are in having an inclination towards something and it is still defined in some dictionaries as alternately relating towards habits rather than solely pertaining to psychological or physiological dependency.
Um, sounds like like addiction to me.
It was military hardware that was using those bullets, my friend. :)
If I want to protect myself, I'm going to want a bullet with quite a bit more punch, thanks.
So, online beer would probably turn out to be OK, as would online marijuana.
Cigarettes are an interesting case. Nicotine is pretty high up on the addicting list, but experimentally even heavy smokers don't seem to consumer so much that they ruin their lives the way, say, a heroin addict might. Probably because cigarettes don't really impair your functionality. So probably they should be allowed online.
example: drop tons of Agent Orange on the lands/people of Vietnam? Just an oopsie! and they move on, wipe their hands clean. People dead and children deformed. Oopsie! Our mistake. Next meeting.
Any ideas what can we do? I like projects that try to give more power to the people (like DemocracyOS), but I think it's rather kind of a bugfix for a badly designed system - it's important to try to improve it to keep it somehow working in the short term, yet (IMO) the whole architecture is broken and won't work in the long term when everything changes so fast...
That being said, I think this is the federal government showing, through the courts, how terrified they are of people running things they cannot control. Bitcoin terrifies them. They want to send a very clear message.
Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
But let's talk about this alleged hitman situation. Didn't the police come up with the idea and create the situation where a third of a million dollars appeared to have been stolen and a volunteer appeared to defect with information and a threat to bring down the organization?
What exactly does count as coercion? If the police were to make your incentives work out a certain way - let's say they were aware that a non-call-girl was in dire straights was potentially willing to accept money for a personal night, they freeze her bank account and provide a good looking and safe opportunity with a load of cash to do it - would that count as compulsion?
Or is it just by appeal to words that counts as compulsion?
How can a court decide what you would have done otherwise?
It seems like a pretty difficult area of law - and one that the defendant could argue?
For the record I do not support trafficking of drugs and illegal materials, nor calling of hit men: but I do want to make sure that the tools to get a conviction do not further enshrine precedents that have fascistic qualities to them - e.g. parallel construction, entrapment, others.
> Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
" Yes. I went to Georgetown Law, where I was an editor of the American Criminal Law Review. I started out defending juveniles in D.C., then was a prosecutor with the Manhattan D.A.’s office for about 9.5 years, first in the Special Narcotics office and then in the Rackets bureau. I’ve been doing mostly criminal defense since then, both white-collar and street crime, federal and state. "
Unfortunately I can't ask webcomics questions. Looking for answers to questions above.
The police are allowed to give you the idea (you are required to refuse), they're allowed to give you the means (they can sell you the gun/drugs/etc.), they're allowed to create opportunities (bait cars), they're even allowed to become a part of the conspiracy with you and to lie to you about it (undercover agents).
What they're not allowed to do is to force your hand or corrupt someone who wasn't committing crimes to start.
So it's not going to count if the only reason they would have otherwise refused to commit the crime was because they were dealing with the cops and it's not going to count if the reasons they decided to commit the crime stem from their own wrongdoing. If you want to protect yourself from someone blackmailing you over criminal acts you've done, you turn yourself into the police. You don't hire a hitman and add yet another crime to the list.
There are a lot of misconceptions about what is or is not entrapment. A lot of things like lying about not being a cop when under cover, putting out a bait car, or just watching you commit a crime without warning you it was a crime are not entrapment and the reason why is explained in the guide.
It's only entrapment when they do something to overcome some resistance you put up to committing the crime. So unless you can show that they somehow changed your mind, the entrapment defense won't work.
Sure, the thief wouldn't have stolen the bait car if they knew it was a bait car, but the question is whether they would have stolen any car.
It seems to me that DPR came up with murder as the 'solution' to this problem, even if we claim that the problem itself was entirely manufactured.
Entrapment defenses are only supposed to prevent innocent people from being coerced by police into committing a new crime, not to provide a get out of jail free card to criminals who were somehow fooled by the police.
So the real question is not whether the police gave him a reason to hire a hitman, it's whether he ever would have hired an assassin at all.
Similar searches for the legal distinction between extortion and blackmail consider blackmail a form of coercion.
Given (A) that blackmail is coercion (psychological pressure), and (B) coercing someone into committing a crime is entrapment. Would (A) and (B) then not imply that (C) blackmailing should count as entrapment?
DPR did not come up with a hitman as a solution. Law enforcement made the suggestion. They did not use the words, just had their fake identity offer to take care of the situation.
The overarching point here to protect people who weren't committing crimes from being dragged into them ("corrupted") and the rules are set up to avoid protecting criminals who were merely fooled by the police into exposing their criminal nature.
Nobody made him hire a hitman. They gave him a reason to, but they didn't make him do it. If he needed protection from a blackmailer, he could have turned himself in as well as the blackmailer.
This. If he hadn't created a multi-million dollar drug empire, there would've been no blackmail. Therefore, the fact that he had to resort to murder to stop the blackmail is no defense at all.
"It's his own fault he couldn't go to the police for help with the blackmail, so the court cannot reasonably excuse him for not doing so."
That's not how blackmail works within the legal system.
You don't get to kill other people to cover up your own crimes, period. Self-defense is the only possible justification, and that requires an imminent threat to his life (or at least grievous bodily injury). Threats to incriminate you don't count for anything.
Please refer to the guide, it explains all of these myths. If you think things work some other way, cite law to the contrary.
Can you be specific about which webcomic had law enforcement blackmailing someone? I didn't see one that covers our case there.
> 'because an innocent person would say "no".'
Doesn't that imply that all entrapment is legal? And is it even true? People can be blackmailed for things they haven't done and even easily give false confessions of guilt...
Thanks for the conversation Natsu. I don't think you're the legal expert I was hoping would be in this thread. Again thank you for sharing your opinion.
=====
Can the police give you the idea to do something bad?
YES - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=646
You're supposed to refuse.
=====
Can the police commit crimes along with you?
YES - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=649
There are limits, though, to what sort of crimes, explained in the guide. Assuming they haven't overstepped those bounds, they're not in trouble, and you are. Not only that, but YOU can even get charged for the crimes they did if you were both members of the same criminal conspiracy.
=====
If you're under duress, is it okay to kill someone to save your own life?
NO - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=813
It would be good to go back to review the necessity section, as well - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=722
EDIT: Fixed a mistake.
None of these cover the scenario. They do not have to do with whether using coercion (let's say the leverage in the third example) counts as entrapment if done by the police.
The answer is yes.
You are continuing to try to use web comics to argue a strawman.
They are interesting web comics, for sure.
Whether it is okay or not to kill someone if you are under duress is tangential to whether it counts as entrapment.
Both can be true. It can not be okay - illegal - AND be entrapment on the part of the police.
The argument is that it was entrapment.
The argument was not about whether hiring a hitman would be okay or not.
Please, if you feel like getting the last word in, for the sake of readers who stumble onto this, cover the issue and not another straw man.
Further, this is all 1L stuff (i.e. the basics). DRP's lawyers know all this stuff. And yet, as far as I can see, they didn't even try this argument. There's only one reason a lawyer doesn't raise an argument that would get their client off the hook: because it's bogus. (Raising bogus arguments in court is a bad idea... it wastes everyone's time and angers the judge, do it enough and you can get sanctioned.)
And they did cover the hitman issue--they most certainly did try to suppress the evidence that he hired a hitman (just not with arguments over entrapment). You can read more here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
But not once did they say 'entrap'. You seem to be trying to argue that DPR wasn't predisposed to hiring hitmen before the cops got there, but that the cops convinced him that it was his only option.
I've covered why that doesn't cut it: the police CAN join your conspiracy, they CAN lie to you, they CAN give you the means (and the idea!) to commit the crime, and he DID have other options (he doesn't have to like them). Each of those cuts out elements of his defense, leaving nothing.
So the case you have to make is that the police overcame his resistance to hiring a hitman, but the chat logs given never show him saying "no, I don't want to do this" they show him as eager to make use of this "solution."
To establish a claim of entrapment, you have to show that he resisted the idea and that the police overcame this resistance. From there, courts may follow one of two approaches: deciding whether this defendant had been predisposed to commit the crime or whether this approach would have caused any law-abiding citizen to commit the crime.
I've been pointing to the latter approach, as I think it's more productive to take an objective approach than a subjective one. Were a law-abiding citizen in DPR's shoes, they would NOT have hired the hitman. A law-abiding citizen hit by this would have turned to the police for protection from the blackmail, not to a hitman.
The discussion of necessity and duress is relevant to whether he had "other options." Both of those are arguments that one does not have other real options. Because both of those unqestionably fail, he had other options.
To establish entrapment, you have to prove that he had no way out and that they used this to overcome resistance. In the example of actual entrapment, we have someone shown as refusing to commit a crime for money, then agreeing only because someone's life is at stake and the papers aren't really important.
Nowhere have you cited any of the chat logs with him showing resistance to hiring a hitman (this is required!). And then you have to show them overcoming this resistance.
Maybe if you can show the police telling him that police protection is worthless or shooting down his ideas for avoiding hiring a hitman you could get somewhere, but... no such evidence is on offer.
Rather, all of the evidence points to the fact that he was predisposed to commit this crime. From the legal brief cited above:
The next day, Ulbricht told another coconspirator, CC-2, about the theft. (Id.) Ulbricht expressed surprise that the Employee had stolen from him given that he had a copy of the Employee’s driver’s license. (Id. at 6-7.) Later in the conversation, Ulbricht and CC-2 discussed the possibility that the Employee was cooperating with law enforcement, and CC-2 remarked:
So if you want to argue this, take facts cited from court papers (e.g. papers filed by DPR's lawyers), then fit those to the elements of entrapment. Show me from the chat logs or similar sources where he exhibited resistance to the idea, then show me how the police convinced him to give up that resistance.
Because that's how you establish entrapment.
You sound like you're a very insistent and dogged debater.
It would be becoming of you to take your passion for argumentation and apply it to the arguments being made by the opposition. I'm certain that if you did this you would have more success.
I would reply point by point but as they say "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
Thanks again for the discussion. Hope to see you continue to be verbose (but perhaps more charitable) in other threads around HN.
To establish entrapment, you need to locate some place in which he demonstrated some resistance to hiring a hitman, I was unable to find any such evidence in materials before the Court. If you think otherwise, quote anything you like from his log or any other evidence before the Court that shows him being averse to hiring a hitman until they talked him into it.
Without that, you don't get to claim entrapment, legally. The Court would just say you were already predisposed to commit the crime and ignore your protests about how the cops fooled you, as is shown repeatedly in the law guide. Moreover, the burden of proof is on you to establish entrapment, not the other way around. So it's not enough to say that but for the theft/blackmail he wouldn't have done this, you have to show him resisting the idea.
Was he set up by the cops? Undoubtedly so. Every single example in the law guide of non-entrapment shows the cops setting someone up. But there are standards for entrapment which must be met by evidence properly presented in court. If his lawyers do not make this argument, it is because they cannot. If someone suggests that "hey, you should hire this guy to kill that guy who's causing you problems," you will be in legal trouble if you go along with their suggestion instead of refusing it.
So 'charitable' has nothing to do with it. The evidence before the Court isn't very charitable to him. You might argue that this is unfair, but this is how you determine something like entrapment. That's why there are long fights over the evidence (like the one I linked earlier), because that determines what they have to work with.
Is it (A), (B), or (C) that is incorrect?
It sounds like you are saying that (C) is incorrect. However you are confusing how this is shown in court - what needs to be established - from the principle and definition of coercion.
Law enforcement did not charge him for the hitman so the defense did not need to put up a case for entrapment, and as far as I can tell the legal defense dropped the ball a number of places. So it is not enough to point at the defense and backwards reason that if there were entrapment that it would have been established. There was no opportunity. There will be a separate hearing on the use of law enforcement coercion and we may see an argument and evidence presented there.
Neither of us would be willing or able to establish a full defense of DPR or a full case for law enforcement - suggesting that this is my responsibility is intellectually dishonest.
Take any number of resources:
http://www.pdxcriminallawyers.com/articles/entrapment-and-po...
"What Is Entrapment?
When it comes to police coercion, a defendant is assumed to have the responsibility to turn down an opportunity to commit a crime when posed by a law enforcement officer. Instead, a defendant will need to prove that the law enforcement officer took additional actions to force a person into an illegal act. The following may be considered sufficient actions to force a person into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn’t:
- Fraudulent claims or promises
- Depending on the specifics, verbal harassment or flattery
- Threats against a person, their property, or their job
If a defendant wants to cite entrapment, they have a duty to present proof of entrapment. As it is what is known as an affirmative defense, the defendant has to offer evidence to clear their willing involvement in a crime."
http://www.grayarea.com/entrap.htm
"So, a defendant cannot be exonerated of a crime on an entrapment claim even if he or she can prove that police had no reason whatsoever to suspect even the slightest of criminal inclinations. What they must prove is that were induced by police to commit the crime. This leads us to the second of the four questions: What constitutes inducement?
An officer merely approaching a defendant and requesting that they commit a crime does not. To claim inducement, a defendant must prove he or she was unduly persuaded, threatened, coerced, harassed or offered pleas based on sympathy or friendship by police. A defendant must demonstrate that the government conduct created a situation in which an otherwise law-abiding citizen would commit an offense."
Yes, what you are arguing against is a straw man. Quite simply you are not charitably interpreting the situation whereby law enforcement created a situation in which DPR had an incentive to hire a hitman as entrapment. It is the simulation of blackmail, fraud and threats to DPR's business that constitute coercion.
Merely suggesting that there be a hitman is not coercion. But simulating blackmail, defrauding him and threatening his business constitute coercion.
This is what we're talking about and you have repeatedly been ignoring.
Because you are arguing merely in the context of "they offered a hitman and he agreed" you are arguing against a weakened form of my argument.
My argument, in full, charitable form, can be seen in the second reference quoted.
"An officer merely approaching a defendant and requesting that they commit a crime does not. To claim inducement, a defendant must prove he or she was unduly persuaded, threatened, coerced, harassed or offered pleas based on sympathy or friendship by police. A defendant must demonstrate that the government conduct created a situation in which an otherwise law-abiding citizen would commit an offense."
An officer did not merely approach DPR and request that he commit a crime.
They simulated blackmail, fraud and threat to property: that is coercive.
Definitions of blackmail includes the word "coercion".
Please, I don't care how long your posts are if you don't bother to address the premises of the argument.
Because you are refusing to address the use of simulated blackmail and fraud to coerce DPR, you are not charitably engaging the argument. You are arguing against a straw man. You are pretending that law enforcement merely chatted with DPR online without setting up coercive pretenses.
Please, for your own sake, be charitable when debating people - either in person or online.
> Given (A) that blackmail is coercion (psychological pressure), and (B) coercing someone into committing a crime is entrapment. Would (A) and (B) then not imply that (C) blackmailing should count as entrapment?
(A) isn't sufficient motive for hiring someone to murder someone (you have no right to use deadly force to protect mere property). Also, even if someone hold a gun to your head and tells you to kill someone else, it's still criminal if you do that (it's one of the examples in the law guide). This makes it nearly impossible to entrap someone into hiring a hitman, without even getting into the particulars of this case.
(B) is necessary, but not sufficient, to support a claim of entrapment.
A person must prove that they put up some resistance to committing the crime and that the police or their agents overcame this. So he needs a quote of him saying "NO" to the idea in the chat logs (or something equivalent to this, in the admitted evidence), then police pressure, then him changing his mind.
You can see how it played out in the law guide sample: the young lady refuses to commit the crime for money, but relents when a police agent tells her that lives are at stake. That refusal is very important!
As your source correctly states, a "defendant is assumed to have the responsibility to turn down an opportunity to commit a crime when posed by a law enforcement officer." The quotes quoted by the Court demonstrate the opposite, that he was very agreeable to the police's suggestion once offered, failing to meet this duty. Those demonstrate against the resistance he must show that he put up to claim entrapment.
If you can find something in the chat log, his legal briefs, or wherever that proves he said "no" before he said "yes", please offer it. Your source correctly confirms that he has the burden of proof to show this and establish entrapment.
> Law enforcement did not charge him for the hitman so the defense did not need to put up a case for entrapment
The hiring of the hitman was an element of the "continuing criminal enterprise" (CCE) charge, for which he was later convicted. This has been covered in previous discussions of the court documents. I am not clear on why you are still objecting to this.
I am also confused by your version of "charitable." It's not my intent to be disrespectful, but I can't reasonably claim that a case exists without evidence for it. I can't claim he's legally innocent, nor that he was denied due process, given that he was convicted by a jury of his peers in a court of law. I can't assume things to be in DPR's favor without admissible evidence showing that when analyzing how the law would treat this scenario. Nor can I shift the burden of proof in his favor when the law says otherwise.
That's now how law works.
I'm sorry if I come off as harsh, I certainly don't intend that. But you should be aware that real courts are absolutely hostile to such arguments. Not only would you get savaged by opposing counsel, you'd face motions for sanctions for wasting everyone's time.
I'm not going to sue anybody, I'm just going to point out that what you want to argue doesn't work because it doesn't meet the legal definitions :)
DPR can't properly meet either element of entrapment under either the subjective or objective standard due both to a lack of evidence and admitted evidence that shows him being agreeable to the suggestion. As the law guide says, "they're allowed to go after those who would say yes."
The charge of entrapment is separate from the severity of the crime someone is entrapped into or whether the entrapment would be considered a sufficient motive, were it not simulated. It is merely enough that the police coerced the defendant.
The blackmail, however, was for a delayed use of force - loss of freedom/liberty - which is tantamount to loss of life, and indeed in this case Ross lost the remainder of his life. It would be uncharitable (again) to suggest that it was merely about property. But (again) all one needs to establish entrapment is threat to property.
> This makes it nearly impossible to entrap someone into hiring a hitman, without even getting into the particulars of this case.
Can you support this argument by citing the law, precedent or a summary? (This claim is not supported by your webcomics.)
> even if someone hold a gun to your head and tells you to kill someone else, it's still criminal if you do that Please stop referring to webcomics as "the" law guide.
Of course its still criminal. Do not confuse this with whether it is entrapment. (If done by the police) It is both entrapment and it is criminal.
Where are you getting the idea that if the police hold a gun to your head to make you shoot someone that isn't entrapment? Can you cite the law or precedent? Again, the webcomic does not cover this: in the webcomic, the police are not holding the gun.
> (B) is necessary, but not sufficient, to support a claim of entrapment
Right, one also needs (A).
> So he needs a quote of him saying "NO" to the idea in the chat logs (or something equivalent to this, in the admitted evidence), then police pressure, then him changing his mind.
This is not the case. If someone never says "NO" because the police never approach a defendant, but the police apply pressure and then make the approach after the pressure is applied, this still counts as entrapment.
> You can see how it played out in the law guide sample: the young lady refuses to commit the crime for money, but relents when a police agent tells her that lives are at stake. That refusal is very important!
Please stop referring to the webcomic as "the" law guide.
The refusal is sufficient, but not necessary to establish in court that there was pressure applied. All the the defense needs to do is show that there was pressure (coercion). One way to do this is to show that the defendant said no, pressure was applied, and then the defendant said yes. But it is not the only way to establish that there was coercion/pressure.
As my source correctly states to qualify the quote you cherrypicked:
"Instead, a defendant will need to prove that the law enforcement officer took additional actions to force a person into an illegal act. The following may be considered sufficient actions to force a person into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn’t:
- Fraudulent claims or promises
- Depending on the specifics, verbal harassment or flattery
- Threats against a person, their property, or their job"
That is, "the defendant has to offer evidence to clear their willing involvement in a crime." In this case, the defendant would offer the fact that they were blackmailed and defrauded.
> If you can find something in the chat log, his legal briefs, or wherever that proves he said "no" before he said "yes", please offer it. Your source correctly confirms that he has the burden of proof to show this and establish entrapment.
It is not my responsibility to establish this. It is intellectually dishonest to presume that it is my responsibility to do this. It is also intellectually dishonest to suggest that the only way to show that there was police coercion is to show a "no" and then a "yes". Coercion can be established many different ways.
> I'm sorry if I come off as harsh, I certainly don't intend that.
Wrt CCE, this is also a rounding down of the argument. DPR will be facing separate charges in a separate case for the hitman, will he not? The hitman bit was brought up as an anecdote to support the CCE charge and not something that the defense could challenge as entrapment at that time. This is why I bring it up.
By uncharitable I merely mean that you aren't willing to take the actual argument. You have not directly addressed the argument. At this point I am convinced that you are not willing to.
You don't come off as harsh. I would use the word dismissive. I've used the word 'uncharitable'. Maybe 'troll'?
Argument from exhaustion against a straw man.
----------------------------------
Let's go forward from this point.
If the police entered a mall, forced someone at gunpoint to kill another person, could that person then be arrested for murder with no possibility of arguing that they were entrapped?
Suppose that before or during being held at gunpoint, at no point did they tell anyone that "no" they wouldn't kill.
Yes, it's separate, but the point was that there are no excuse defenses that cover it, period.
> The blackmail, however, was for a delayed use of force - loss of freedom/liberty - which is tantamount to loss of life, and indeed in this case Ross lost the remainder of his life.
The law recognizes no such equivalence, nor do any of your sources show that. It would be ridiculous for the law to reward you for trying to escape being brought to court, particularly if you thought you had a reason you'd be sent to jail after their examination.
> It would be uncharitable (again) to suggest that it was merely about property. But (again) all one needs to establish entrapment is threat to property.
The threat of going to jail when your crimes are exposed is one made by the court in the first place, so how can it rule that it was somehow wrong to threaten you with punishment or excuse you for trying to have someone killed to avoid answering to the court?
I did support that by pointing out how none of the excuse defenses cover this in general. Hiring a hitman is simply criminal, so you need some reason to say that a law-abiding citizen might think it was okay in this circumstance, which brings us to the excuse defenses. Courts do not entertain hypotheticals, so there's no precedent. If you want to argue that they do, you should instead find a time when someone was excused for hiring a hitman.
> Please stop referring to webcomics as "the" law guide.
Okay, now this is just silly. 'The', as I used it, doesn't mean it's the only guide or the definitive source of all law, it means it's the same one I've been referencing. You can denigrate it as a 'comic', but legal textbooks actually look very much like that comic in written form. They lay out various scenarios and explain how the law plays out. So the main difference is that this one has little illustrations. It still covers the elements of each item and gives examples of how they work.
> All the the defense needs to do is show that there was pressure (coercion).
They have to show that they were not otherwise inclined to commit the crime and that the coercion was sufficient to change their mind (subjective standard) or to change the mind of any law abiding citizen (objective standard). "They're allowed to go after those who would say yes."
You quote that "the defendant has to offer evidence to clear their willing involvement in a crime"
But such evidence has been offered. They show him carefully considering whether to get a hitman and answering "yes" with no evidence of reluctance or refusal, save some worries about how it might impact his business. The fact that he deliberated works against him, too. He could more easily claim that the pressure got to him if he had acted hastily, in a panic. The fact that it was a coldly calculated move will leave people to infer malice.
> DPR will be facing separate charges in a separate case for the hitman, will he not?
Maybe, but he's got a bunch of life sentences right now, so I almost wonder if they will even bother? I don't expect them to play nice here, though. Whatever they choose will be to make sure he's well and thoroughly screwed, given how high profile this is.
As you can see, I have no illusions about them playing nice.
> It is not my responsibility to establish this.
I pointing out that the burden of proof is, legally, on the side of the one claiming entrapment. That's how the law works. If you want to convince me that DPR was entrapped, that's what you have to establish. Any lesser burden does not meet the standard set forth in law and is, for that reason, unconvincing.
> If the police entered a mall, forced someone at gunpoint to kill another person, could that person then be arrested for murder with no possibility of arguing that they were entrapped?
This scenario is in the duress chapter, albeit not by a cop.
The person in that scenario was guilty if they pulled the trigger. They might get it reduced to a lesser offense like manslaughter, but they wouldn't be excused. The person, cop or otherwise, holding a literal gun to their head would also be arrested.
No such scenario is on offer here, though. The loss of freedom resulting from blackmail over exposing one's crimes would be caused by the court itself. And the court is going to trust the court's own judgement (how could it not?) over the contents of the blackmail. As it will believe that it would fairly judge a law-abiding citizen (for whom the blackmail would be false), it has every reason to infer by that very fact that those who would hire a killer to escape the court's own scrutiny are up to no good.
Moreover, a court does not consider its own threat to jail you in the event it judges you to have broken the law to be equivalent to losing your life. So you cannot draw a hasty equivalence between being jailed and being killed and try to use the duress rules for losing your life. The duress rules don't even excuse you for killing someone when there's an immediate threat to your life, so why would they excuse something less than that? Now, the self-defense rules can excuse you for protecting yourself, but they require an immediate threat (among other things), and yet DPR had time to write about this in his diary, as I have quoted up thread.
If I'm dismissive, it's because I cannot find a case for him to make here, based on law. But this is nothing. Actual lawyers are positively savage in how they destroy weak arguments.
So I do not expect his lawyers to argue this in court, though this is the sort of argument I might expect if he went pro se and tried his own hand at arguing with the court. He might do that just to grand-stand, but it wouldn't buy him anything but press coverage.
I expect that he will appeal somehow, and his lawyers will likely cite some evidentiary grounds, or similar procedural matters (e.g. "the trial court improperly allowed this evidence because...").
I expect him to lose the appeal. If he tries to appeal to the Supreme Court, I expect that will end with them denying his petition for a writ of certiorari.
You, and anyone else still reading this, can determine the relative quality of our expectations by comparing what we have written is likely to happen to what actually happens. There should be some mismatch for both of us, of course--nobody has a crystal ball--but the distance between our expectations and reality is likely the most objective way to make an assessment.
I think perhaps that would be better than continuing further. Feel free to make your own predictions.
I need to point out one final time that you have not engaged with any of the actual arguments that have been made herein, though you are quick to suggest that the arguments are weak or otherwise round your engagement with a strawman as representative of aspiration to the quality of working attorneys.
You are a mighty troll. A very good one sir.
I will stop feeding you now.
I give up. You win by argument from exhaustion.
And does it really work that way? You can be entrapped so long as your defense has no chutzpah?
Isn't it the case that law enforcement can be guilty of entrapment AND the defendant guilty of a crime? Hasn't this been established many times before? Wouldn't this exclude 'chutzpah' arguments?
I'm not sure that this really replies charitably to the premise of the discussion - i.e. that there was coercion. According to your argument nothing short of law enforcement physically forcing someone to take an action would be entrapment; so long as there are choices - even bad ones. Nor was there a reply to the fact that the hitman wasn't his idea.
It seems to me that those wishing the justice system overlook these issues already had decided on DRPs guilt and were convinced to get it at, even if that meant sacrificing due process and papering over it.
DPR can be behind bars - I don't care. But due process is something that even those wishing it were ignored for this conviction rely on and need, even if they don't think so.
Further, offering you hitman services is NOT entrapment. This would never ensnare an innocent person: they'd say no!
To the best of my knowledge, DPR's lawyers have not even alleged that the police committed any crimes. That would have allowed them to suppress the evidence and, as learned in the link I posted earlier, the evidence that he hired a hitman WAS allowed in court because it was part of the crimes he was charged with.
I did reply to your other post about it 'not being his idea'. That EXACT argument is explained in the law guide, right here: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=646
The short answer is that, even if they offer you a hitman, all you ever had to do was say no. Giving you an opportunity is not entrapment. It just shows that if it hadn't been for the police, you would have committed a crime (solicitation for murder, here).
Finally, 'due process' means that he had his day in court. He got that and was sentenced by a jury of his peers. You can disagree with the reasons behind it, but there are good reasons for these rules which are clearly explained in the guide.
The fact that he was willing to deal with hitmen is the problem here. It's not self-defense, nor can it be. It's not a solution a non-criminal would ever accept. The fact that he had only bad solutions was due to his own guilt--there would be no illegal activities for the blackmailer to expose if he had not engaged in any. And if the blackmail was false, he'd have every reason to want to cooperate with the police and prove his innocence by working with them to catch the blackmailer.
Nope, but creating a false circumstance of blackmail is. That's what we're talking about.
But we've gone in circles. I think we both need to talk to other (knowledgeable) people. Thanks for the chat.
You should have stopped there. Unless you're trying to claim that Force somehow zombified Ulbricht and then mind-controlled him into placing the hit...
As an aside, you conveniently neglect to mention that Curtis Green feared Ross would have him killed simply because Curtis had been arrested and Ross knew that he might spill the beans. And since Curtis knows Ross better than you or I do, and the fact that he managed to predict that Ross would try to have him killed, brings into question whether the money really made a difference.
I wonder: If the money had been gained legally then stolen, what steps could the victim legally take to recover it?
And if there is, can you show me a law in the US where a citizen can go after a robber long after the robbery is over and then kill them?
I think not.
Texas was the first thing to come to my mind : http://nation.time.com/2013/06/13/when-you-can-kill-in-texas...
The laws do seem to allow less after the fact, with good reason. My point was that we clearly allow for people to value money over lives.
When is a robbery over? The stuff never stops being yours, and they never stop running away with it.
A lot of things come into play here, but I'm pretty sure you could still post a reward, 'dead or alive'. I think it's legal to try to catch the robber yourself indefinitely, and defend yourself if threatened in the process.
Our wild west laws are only slightly less savage than what was alleged in this case.
From your source " the protection-of-property element of the deadly force law is “pretty unique to Texas.” ".
If this type of law is pretty unique to Texas, let's look at the Texas law, instead of necessarily simplistic summaries.
Here [1] is the actual Texas state law. The relevant section is 9.42. The law states that deadly force may only be used in the case you claim if the person meets (among other conditions) that "the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.". Section 9.42B.
So no, you're not just free to shoot people for robbery, willy nilly. There are several steps that, even in Texas, need to be met.
>When is a robbery over? The stuff never stops being yours, and they never stop running away with it.
and
>I think it's legal to try to catch the robber yourself indefinitely, and defend yourself if threatened in the process.
is just nonsense. Even Texas requires that a person be defending their property or (Section 9.41b) "if the actor uses the force immediately or in fresh pursuit after the dispossession and:" with some more constraints after that. You cannot just chase them months later and do anything.
So, "laws don't allow killing for robbery," unless there are quite a bit of other circumstances, and very few places allow it for any circumstance except when there is presumed lethal threat to the defender.
And absolutely certainly the laws do not allow Ulbrecht to hire someone to kill another no matter what the circumstances.
Please cite law statute or legal cases with links. Poorly researched news stories and opinions are much less useful.
[1] http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/SOTWDocs/PE/htm/PE.9.h...
>I think it's legal to try to catch the robber yourself indefinitely
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine#State-by-state_...
Louisiana appears to allow lethal force just to prevent unlawful entry into a dwelling, place of business, or motor vehicle.
You're also looking at one law about one situation to dispute what I conjectured about a different situation. Is it not legal to chase down the thief yourself? If you are threatened in the process, is it not then legal to defend yourself? Are 'dead or alive' bounties not legal? The effect may well be the same.
Are you claiming they are? Note I simply asked:
> Please cite law statute or legal cases with links. Poorly researched news stories and opinions are much less useful.
Nothing you've posted allows Ulbricht to hire someone to kill Green, no matter how Ulbricht obtained the money to begins with. Until you cite a law by statute you think allows this, we're done.
Your assertion, not true as stated, and only party true except in very specific circumstances. You claim Texas; I show that's not true in such generality; you drop that line. I'll vote this one as "Not backed up."
> I'm pretty sure you could still post a reward, 'dead or alive'
Your assertion, not backed up. And wrong.
> I think it's legal to try to catch the robber yourself indefinitely, and defend yourself if threatened in the process.
Your assertion, not backed up. And wrong.
> Is it not legal to chase down the thief yourself?
Your assertion, not backed up. And wrong.
>Louisiana appears to allow lethal force just to prevent unlawful entry into a dwelling, place of business, or motor vehicle.
And now just simply move your original goalposts from robbery, since your original claim about Texas was not the slam dunk you hoped.
>Are 'dead or alive' bounties not legal?
Your assertion, not backed up. Also wrong.
Do you see why I asked for you to provide statute, since all your unbacked assertions are just wrong?
>So... you make up an assertion I'm supposed to back up? Nice.
You make up assertions, are unable to support them when asked multiple times, and then try to blame me? Classic.
I'm sorry you thought my statement had 'such generality' to apply to any defense from any robbery. If you look back at the point I was making you'll see why this isn't relevant.
"As explained above, the murder-for-hire evidence is probative both as evidence of the charged offenses and to prove Ulbricht’s identity as DPR—a key disputed issue in this case. In addition, the charges in this case are extremely serious: Ulbricht is charged not with participating in a run-of-the-mill drug distribution conspiracy, but with designing and operating an online criminal enterprise of enormous scope, worldwide reach, and capacity to generate tens of millions of dollars in commissions."
That's not to say that, strictly speaking, this isn't a miscarriage of justice - it is. No one should be in prison merely for selling drugs or facilitating the sale of drugs. But, Ross Ulbricht is likely a danger to society.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
Please remember: the argument isn't "did the government conclusively prove that Ulbricht attempted to commission a murder".
It is: "There was no such thing [here: <<evidence of a murder for hire scheme>>] introduced for the trial" (exact words taken from the comment rooting this subthread and the parent comment that provoked it).
That's not only false, it's pretty much the opposite of what happened: not only was evidence of the murder-for-hire scheme formally introduced at trial, but it was ventured at trial, in a manner that put a part of the prosecution's case on the line for it. Not only did Ulbricht's team have the opportunity to rebut it, but they were obligated to do so in the course of competently representing him.
Edited a bit for clarity.
No, the indictment is simply the initial document filed years ago which started the case and the specific charges can be, and were (right up to before Ulbricht's sentencing, even, where I believe some charges were combined or something) amended and strategies changed. You seem to think that indictments are immutable and all you have to do is quote a line from it, but you are not a lawyer.
> That's not only false, it's pretty much the opposite of what happened: not only was evidence of the murder-for-hire scheme formally introduced at trial, but it was ventured at trial, in a manner that put a part of the prosecution's case on the line for it.
The prosecution did not introduce the murder for hire and during the trial, as I already quoted, explicitly disclaimed that it was trying to do so and that they were only talking about other things like control of Bitcoins.
Is there a newer indictment you can point us to? One in which the murder-for-hire scheme is not ventured as part of the case?
No. It very much mattered. The indictment formally documents the charges Ulbricht faced. His lawyer, a relatively well-known defense attorney, was fully aware of his obligation to rebut the allegations in the indictment. Ulbricht is, of course, innocent of charges until proven guilty. The prosecution produced what appears to be very compelling evidence. The defense produced something much less compelling.
A variety of things that aren't findings of fact at criminal trials can, unfortunately, be material to the sentencing phase of a trial. The murder-for-hire scheme isn't one of those things: it was an explicit component of a criminal charge that Ulbricht was convicted of, supported by evidence, provided to the Ulbricht defense during the earliest phases of the trial.
[0] see p. 5 of the indictment: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...
No. Soliciting a killing for pay ("murder for hire" in informal terms) as an act to advance a conspiracy is included (hardly "hidden") as one of the alleged overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy, at least one of which must have been found by a juror to have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to vote to convict on the conspiracy charge.
Actually the document uses the phrase "murder-for-hire".
Your word search probably failed because its an image scan and has no searchable text.
You actually need to read it. Which should be helped by the fact that where I linked it, I told you where in the document the murder-for-hire scheme was addressed.
There was no such thing introduced for the trial. It was in the original press release, then it was withdrawn. Maybe it was because of Mark Force's transgressions, or maybe it was just for effect. Regardless, he never got the chance to defend himself against those particular allegations.
By "no such thing", you were referring to the words <<the "murder for hire" evidence>> in the preceding comment.
Let's pick it apart:
1. There was no such thing introduced for the trial. Not only was it introduced for the trial, it was an explicit part of what Ulbricht was indicted for.
2. It was in the original press release, then it was withdrawn. It was never withdrawn; he was indicted based on (among other things) the explicitly asserted "overt act" of commissioning a murder. The murder-for-hire scheme wasn't innuendo, but a rebuttable fact introduced not just as evidence but as one of the legs of the case.
3. Maybe it was because of Mark Force's transgressions, or maybe it was just for effect. It may have been either of those things, but if so, it was also actually one of the predicates of the conspiracy charge he was convicted of.
4. Regardless, he never got the chance to defend himself against those particular allegations. Yes, he did; his legal team mounted multiple arguments against the allegation, and did not prevail at trial. Ulbricht's team had not only the opportunity to defend him against the allegation, but the obligation to. Conclusively refuting that allegation would have significantly harmed the prosecution's case, knocking out one of the predicates for the conspiracy charge.
From what I can tell, you made a fairly complicated series of assertions, none of which turned out to be true.
EDIT: Whoops I see that zorpner said basically the exact same thing just a couple minutes before me.
Yes, it was a factor in his sentencing (the whole debate about whether or not it was charged was because it was included as a factor in the proposed calculation for sentencing.)
Its not "murder", its "soliciting murder in the furtherance of a conspiracy". Which is not a separate crime, but manner in which the crime of conspiracy is achieved.
(Soliciting murder itself can be charged as a crime, and Ulbricht is charged with that, too, though those charges were not tried with these charges.)
Our war-on-drugs sentencing is quite disproportional, IMHO; imputing societal harms that are unfounded. After all, Mr. Ulbright simply provided a safer way for consenting individuals to enter personal financial transactions.
Silk Road is a drop in the bucket compared to all the transactions arranged over SMS messages and using cash - but we don't hold AT&T and the Federal Reserve responsible for running a criminal enterprise.
===== ULBRICHT, 30, of San Francisco, California, was found guilty of: one count of distributing narcotics, one count of distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, and one count of conspiring to distribute narcotics, each of which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years; one count of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison; one of count of conspiring to commit computer hacking, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years; and one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The maximum sentences are prescribed by Congress and are provided for informational purposes only, as the sentence will be determined by the judge. ULBRICHT is scheduled to be sentenced on May 15, 2015.
[1] http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2015/ross-ulbricht-the-creator-and-owner-of-the-silk-road-website-found-guilty-in-manhattan-federal-court-on-all-countsHe provided a system that could be used as a valuable service for legal activities. It could also be used for illegal or banned activities in various jurisdictions.
I'm just saying that it's a dangerous precedent to say that anyone creating a communication or transaction platform can be held liable for conspiring with users who use it to commit crimes.
It is extremely obtuse to act as if this sets a scary precedent By reducing the situation to absurd levels. Context has always mattered and will continue to matter.
If AT&T made a Text 81841 For Guns and created an anonymous infrastructure for arms dealers to sell guns to gangsters, yes, they would be in trouble.
Here's another example - I'm sure that some people have used Reddit for illegal transactions, but no one is going after Reddit for facilitating drug trafficking because it's a small part of their customer base.
In contrast, the Silk Road was wholly dedicated to selling illegal goods. That's why it was created, and that's why it made money.
Anyway, that's not even what this case was really about.
He was not charged for murder itself. During the trial testimony, they were very clear about this (regardless of whatever tptacek may say based on a few random pretrial documents); they worded it so the plots entered in as SR related activity and Bitcoin transactions but that was not part of the charges. From the trial itself: https://www.capa.net/case/2014-cr-00068/page/2159
> Here is the text where he says after redandwhite said I prefer to kill all four, DPR: Hmm, okay, I'll defer to your better judgment. 500,000 has been sent to bitcoin address, transaction number. You look it up on the block chain. There is the payment. The payment was made. How do we know that the payments were made by the defendant? Because they were sent directly from the defendant's bitcoin wallet. That's what Special Agent Yum testified to. Those payments came from addresses that were found on the defendant's laptop, the same wallet we were just discussing earlier, the wallet that was moved to the defendant's local machine right around the same time; in fact, it was moved to the defendant's laptop on April 7 and then on April 8th, he's making the payments. So it was the defendant who made these payments. It was the defendant who was trying to murder five people. Now, to be clear, the defendant has not been charged for these attempted murders here. You're not required to make any findings about them. And the government does not contend that those murders actually occurred. The defendant may have fallen for a big con job, which would only go to show that the Dread Pirate Roberts is not a criminal super-genius that the defendant wants to make him out to be, but what the murder-for-hire exchanges do show is how far the defendant was willing to go to protect his criminal enterprise if users got the idea that their anonymity wasn't safe on Silk Road, that their identities could be leaked en masse, they weren't going to use the site, and the defendant was going to lose business, and he was willing to use violence to stop that from happening.
The Green hits did not come up at all, as far as I know, but I don't think we have all the transcripts yet (the last of them seem to be locked until tomorrow) so maybe the prosecutors managed to work them in tangentially.
However, the hit allegations certainly did affect Forrest in sentencing: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road-...
> Prosecutors said he was more like a drug kingpin, profiting from cyberspace sales of illegal wares, and that he allegedly tried to arrange at least five murders to protect his business. The government said it didn’t believe any were carried out. Forrest said there was “ample and unambiguous evidence” of the plots.
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss...
I agree with you that drug trafficking is way overprosecuted, but...
Ergo, his involvement in murder-for-hire has been proven in a criminal court, and I will feel free to repeat that fact ad nauseum.
Hey icelander, now you, too have allegedly hired someone to kill multiple people.
Better find that icelander guy. What a jerk. (Probably should read my username a bit closer next time.)
My point is, we haven't seen the evidence, a jury hasn't decided about the evidence, why are we talking about this? We can't pretend that Ulbricht's sentence for drug trafficking was fair because of his charges for violent crimes, because the charges for violent crimes have yet to complete. This sentencing happened in a court of law, where speculation about the result of different court cases is as valuable as some dude on the internet saying icelander killed people.
Yes. That was literally a critical piece of evidence at the trial. The defense tried to claim that it wasn't Ulbricht's and failed.
Take a look at the post I'm responding to here. A lot of people in this thread are acting like the murder for hire thing is just some crazy rumor when there is a really compelling body of evidence behind it. Reasonable people can disagree on whether it should be a factor in the sentencing in the drug trial, but to act like there isn't a very high probability of Ross having attempted murder is.. Well it's not reasonable.
In the court of law where Ulbricht was tried for drug trafficking, the murder for hire thing is a crazy rumor. The murder-for-hire case is a separate case, which remains untried. The evidence in the murder-for-hire case is probably compelling, otherwise the government probably wouldn't bring the case. But that's utterly unrelated to the sentencing for drug trafficking.
If Ulbricht was sentenced to life for hiring hit-men, we wouldn't be having this discussion--I have no objection to people being sentenced to life in prison for violent crimes. But he wasn't sentenced to life in prison for violent crimes, he hasn't even been tried for violent crimes yet. He was sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking. And that's not justice.
You do because that's the context of the point I am making. Right now you're having an argument with some point I didn't make, and it's coming off as a bit silly.
>In the court of law where Ulbricht was tried for drug trafficking, the murder for hire thing is a crazy rumor.
First of all, I'm talking about HN here and the persistent need for posters to pretend like the specific evidence we have of Ross being violent was shaky. It's not. We have very good evidence that Ross was a violent person. I wasn't making claims about whether that should have been used in sentencing, so the fact that you keep harping on that is weird.
Second, the fact that he tried to hire murderers was material to the criminal conspiracy charges. So it's not just "a crazy rumor" from the courts point of view. The current way sentencing works is that evidence introduced in the trial can be used for sentencing as long as it meets some burden of proof , and this evidence was there and met that burden.
My gut reaction here is that the burden of proof should be higher (ie an actual conviction) and that the sentencing in question was highly inappropriate from a social standpoint, but I don't have background in law to understand why the rules are the way they are.
At the same time I'm not going to rally behind a guy who incompetently tried to murder people as a way to express my distaste for the American justice system and the drug war. There is such a thing as picking your battles and this is not the hill I want to die on. I am aggrevated that people who share these views seem to be stuck on Ross and are trying to retconn away the evidence rather than pick a better battle to fight. There are myriads of drug war victims and avenues of tackling the problem, but we're going to try to bang a square peg into a round hole here because the guy is a white upper-middle class programmer and we think Bitcoins and Dark Webs are cool? Right.
The strongest statement I will make is that the life sentence is clearly unjust. People should be given second chances with very very few exceptions. Ross should be one of these people.
This is exactly what I am saying.
I think we're vehemently agreeing.
They staged torture and murder to satiate Ulbricht's need to clean up loose ends.
Instead of imprisoning for drug usage - provide treatment and rehab. It's cheaper and has better results. One could argue culture differences in drug usage, but that looks like an attempt to "knock it before you try it".
That's without going into how broken the US prison system is! See: privately owned prisons that require a quota to be filled [0].
[0] http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/criminal-how-lock...
Even if you're against the war on drugs I don't think you should really take it as a personal slight when someone operating on this scale gets arrested. Unless you really 100% believe that distribution of heavy narcotics doesn't damage society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
Distribution and intent to sell are still illegal. I was specifically referring to the users of drugs.
>If drugs were legal and treatment of abuse the focus instead of punishment Silk Road wouldn't have existed in the first place.
I cited Portgual, a country where drugs are legal and the focus is on treatment of users. Giving an example of where such a system exists and works. The "war on drugs" is the wrong approach. I implied, rather indirectly, that prison quotas have a lot to do with keeping drug use illegal. It makes it easier to fill quotas.
Now then - the parent and my focus were both more on the users and the wrong approach for the "war on drugs". A response to me focused more on distribution and extrapolating the legal stance of Portugal. So I cited a Wikipedia page that was more specific and re-iterated that my focus (and the parent I responded to, by extention) were more focused on drug users and treatment doing more good than going on witch hunts for distributors.
Congratulations, you caught Ulbricht. Now what about all the other dealers that people will turn to? Especially local dealers who might lace their drugs or have improperly manufactured drugs (ie. containing arsenic) that may lead to more deaths of users?
I have no idea how the Silk Road worked, but I imagine dealers had accounts and received feedback. This meant there was some level of Social Quality Control over the drugs. Anyone selling faulty/laced drugs would be quickly rooted from the market. Providing a 'safer' place to buy, even if still illegal, does more good for the users than having to trust shady dealers.
This is very, very related to the war on drugs. It's a criticism of the policy of it all.
I'll quote myself from another post I made:
"Mistaking some delusional world of zero crime doesn't do any good for people living in reality."
Nonetheless, that has no bearing on this case. Once somebody is dabbling in murder, they need to go down, because they are clearly not somebody we want in society. That they were "tempted" into it by potential profits enabled by misguided prohibitions is irrelevant.
So yeah, decriminalize drugs, focus on treatment, etc. Maybe that will make the future of our society brighter. But Ulbricht belongs behind bars.
Ulbricht was a legitimate kingpin who at least tried to have people killed. I don't have much sympathy for him and I'd rather distance his actions from real issues with the War on Drugs.
I still disagree that Portugal's policies regarding users is that relevant here. You are right in what you are saying, though.
Don't think so.
Try reading the parent I responded to once more - then my response. If it isn't clear how they correlate, focus especially on the closing sentences of the parent before reading my response to them. If still confused - press the "Panic!" button and I'll do my best to assist you.
E:
I see the "Panic!" button was pressed. Do you require assistance?
Drug policy and private prisons are completely irrelevant. This dude operated a massive organized criminal enterprise, and was willing to kill to protect it.
Frankly, whether he was selling stolen stereos, cocaine or moon rocks isn't really relevant in the eyes of the law.
That's not quite correct. The contracts do not require that a certain number of prisoners be kept in the prison. They require that a certain number be paid for. The contracts are essentially of the form that the state will pay $X to house up to Y prisoners, and $Z/prisoner for any prisoners beyond Y prisoners.
Since private prisons are only a small fraction of the prisons, the people that should be most annoyed by this are the employees of state run prisons. If crime goes down in a state and they want to close a prison to save money they most likely will make sure to fill the private prison first (since they are already paying for it) and cut staff at the state prisons.
(NOTE: this does NOT mean I'm saying private prisons are fine--just that contracts that guarantee a minimal payment regardless of occupancy are not necessarily bad. Private organizations tend to have less oversight than state run organizations, so it would not at all surprise me if the private prisons have staff that are not as well trained or as accountable as state prison staff. If I were setting up a prison system and it was going to allow private prisons, I'd probably require that the warden be appointed by and employed by and answer to the state, not the prison owner, and has the ability to fire private prison employees who are in jobs that involve direct interaction with the prisoners. I'd also require penalty clauses in the contracts that reduce payments if conditions are not at least as good as those required of state prisons.
It would be interesting to look at the strength of whatever public employee union represents state prison employees in each state, and see if there is a significant correlation between that and state use of private prisons. I'd expect weaker unions would increase the chances of private prisons.
(emphasis added)
I think it's pretty much impossible to run that kind of a global darkmarket otherwise. Even if you were the world's most experienced sysadmin and could lock down your server(s) (and NSA/FBI httpd/nginx/apache 0day doesn't apply) you still have to worry about Bitcoin laundering and many other issues, you'd have to run around like Jason Bourne everyday and nobody can sustain that discipline without making mistakes. You only have to make one mistake and you're joining Ross at ADX Florence (where he's likely going, nobody convicted of the "Kingpin" charge ends up anywhere else besides supermax prisons)
However, that would not be so easy for hundreds or thousands of Bitcoins. It's hard for a snake to discreetly swallow a pig. Numerous wallets and small transactions would be prudent. But the process could probably be automated.
Even by the bloodiest of bleeding heart standards, contract killing isn't some victimless crime.
And yes, I think I have a sort of psychological "stake" as you say in Ross' non-violence.
Because, even by the "Hang them by the neck until they are dead" gung-ho standards, you generally have to be convicted of something before being punished for it.
Either way enough relatives of deceased drug abusers testified at sentencing, and enough heartless chat logs of DPR's were introduced as evidence, to rather eviscerate the idea that Silk Road was completely "victimless".
By that logic relatives of deceased drunk-driving victims should be testifying against bars and liquor store proprietors as well.
I think while most expected this kind of outcome, the comments coming out in support are really a round-about kind of way of expressing various posters underlying opinion about U.S. drug laws and policies as ridiculous, draconian, counter-productive and harmful.
Uh, should I be the one to tell you that such relatives often do that very thing?
But at least bars and liquor stores don't often go about torturing and murdering their employees, so at least they have that going for them.
http://freeross.org/the-case-the-goal-and-why-this-matters-2...
Or if you don't grep, you could just start from the beginning; the judge essentially leads off with the murder-for-hire subplot right from the beginning of her ruling.
As mentioned by dragonwriter, this murder-for-hire scheme was an overt act charged as part of Count One of the indictment (p5)
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...
Oh right he wasn't. He was convicted solely for selling drugs, and sentenced for being a geek.
Make no mistake about it - the world hate us, it just tolerates us right now because we are effective and need.
It's interesting to note that even if one of these overdose victims had health problems that predisposed them to overdose mortality --- something that is pretty far from being established --- there is actually a legal rule that contemplates this circumstance directly: google "the eggshell skull rule". The prosecution memo invokes the rule.
tptacek, if you're going to act like an expert on this case, you should read all the documents, not just the indictment and one or two of the shorter things.
Your suggestion that I read more of the documents in this case is rude, uncalled for by anything I said, and unproductive.
It is totally reasonable for you to be skeptical or even cynical of the prosecution's case.
It is not at all reasonable for you to demand that everyone else on this thread share exactly your perspective on the case, or to suggest that people who disagree with you must do so because they're uninformed --- an accusation I would not have considered making about you.
Edit: rereading your comment, just to make sure I wasn't out of line (I don't think I was): you don't need to go to PACER to get the Taff declaration (about all 6 pathology cases). All of these documents are available from a Google search, from DOJ, "FreeRoss", and Cryptome.
That would be a good point if it were medical incompetence but the criticisms of Taff were that police did not like his management style and thought personnel arrived at scenes late because they lived outside the county, no? I didn't see anywhere that the prosecution brought this up, even though hearsay is allowed at this point.
> The defense attempted to refute the autopsy using their own pathologist, who did not conduct an autopsy.
He doesn't need to conduct an autopsy to point out problems in how things were done (waiting 4 days to do Wilsdon's autopsy? not doing an autopsy at all on Bridges?) or that the prosecution is straining to associate any death it can with and trying to ignore the long histories of poor health or multiple drug abuse and multiple drug sources.
> Jordan M. did in fact receive an autopsy, which confirmed he died of an overdose of drugs of the kind he ordered on Silk Road.
The Lewis affidavit says that the autopsy confirmed the presence of brain hemorrhage, liver problems (in addition to spleen), and that specifically, "the autopsy report correctly attributed death to multiple/combined drug intoxication. Heroin/opiate, however, was not singled out primary cause of death, and of course, for reasons unknown, the brain hemorrhage was ignored by the authorities conducting the investigation of Mr. Mettee’s death."; in addition, he had other drugs such as diazepam in his system which the prosecution does not claim he bought from SR.
> an accusation I would not have considered making about you.
Nor one I would make about you... about your area of expertise, as opposed to the DNMs.
> All of these documents are available from a Google search, from DOJ, "FreeRoss", and Cryptome.
Not all of them. They are all in RECAP, but that seems to be broken tonight and not allowing downloads of any of the Ulbricht filings.
The US War on Drugs is ridiculously harmful and shortsighted, absolutely. But the sentencing is consistent with US policy, however wrong it is. People are getting two-figure sentences for carrying small amounts of drugs themselves. Someone who facilitates the selling of an illegal product on a much wider scale should not get a lighter sentence.
The whole concept behind the War on Drugs sucks, but this sentence is consistent. If it were a shorter sentence, then it'd be similar to the legal inconsistency around cocaine: the form wealthy white people tend to use (powder cocaine) is much less penalised than the form poor and minority people tend to use (crack cocaine), because...?
I've had friends who've died from purchasing bad drugs at raves from people who were looking to make money and run. In one situation it ended up being rat poison. The guy had other drugs in his system, and combined with the poison his body went into shock. With darknet markets and independent lab testing networks, this type of thing doesn't happen.
People are still going to use drugs. I'd rather law enforcement go after the guys who are selling rat poison at raves than the guys who are setting up safe distribution networks.
I'm not saying this is the case for Ross, but it's a possibility, at least for one of the contracts. Using violence to protect innocents is not something bad. It's just unfortunate he created the situation in the first place - instead of an extortionist, he may have confided in a LEO, thus hurting his users. (Which is apparently what happened.)
Anyways, the big lesson is that when your startup has major security requirements, go slow and don't break things. There's no real reason he shouldn't be retired now, enjoying his life while enhancing others. Just technical incompetence.
Another difference is scale. The extortionist that was after Ross was threatening to leak data on hundreds or thousands of innocent people. Do gangs usually find themselves in such situations?
If a gang is just selling drugs, not otherwise robbing or killing or hurting others, then I'm not very troubled by them killing extortionists, no. I just doubt that scenario makes up a notable portion of gang violence.
It is not a reasonable argument for an individual to make to try to justify their illegal get-rich scheme.
Whether true or not, the intention behind drug laws is physical harm and addiction. Additional harms like risk of violence or overdoses due to impurities are secondary at best.
Unless there's judicial activism going on, making that admission is pretty much just handing the keys to freedom over. Why even bother with a trial? Should have done a plea bargain.
If the law is hurting people, and breaking the law helps people, it's completely reasonable to use that argument to morally justify your illegal behavior. I'd be interested to hear your argument why it is not.
Edit: Though to be clear that wouldn't work to justify all your illegal behavior, if that included like hypothetically trying to have someone killed.
I'd agree that lawbreaking is a reasonable moral choice, but not in this case. Moral lawbreaking, in my view, is done when there is a clear benefit or reason to the lawbreaking. And by clear I mean clear to a reasonable and moral person, and not just a speculative personal opinion.
Given that frame of reference, I would argue that (1) the notion that online drug dealing would lead to harm reduction for a drug addict is speculative rather than clear; (2) the harm caused by improved access to hard drugs by more potential addicts would be tremendous and therefore likely exceed any potential harm reduction; (3) given Ulbrict's apparent willingness to hire hitmen, I find it impossible to believe he was in any way motivated by concern for others.
That's fine; I disagree, but I'm not interested in litigating it here. But your original parent actually was arguing along those lines, cf. "rat poison" et cetera, so perhaps you'd like to retroactively not reject that as "not a reasonable argument".
"Forrest rejected arguments that Silk Road had reduced harm among drug users by taking illegal activities off the street. “No drug dealer from the Bronx has ever made this argument to the court. It’s a privileged argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged,” she said"
>It’s a privileged argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged
I'm unsure what this is even supposed to mean. I tried searching for a definition of "privileged argument" and found nothing. My search phrase was:
"privileged argument" -white -race -racial -feminist
If someone can explain what was meant by this statement, that would be nice and I'd appreciate it.
>“Silk Road created [users] who hadn’t tried drugs before,” Forrest said, adding that Silk Road “expands the market” and places demand on drug-producing (and violent) areas in Afghanistan and Mexico that grow the poppies used for heroin.
>“The idea that it is harm-reducing is so narrow, and aimed at such a privileged group of people who are using drugs in the privacy of their own homes using their personal internet connections”, she said.
Through its drug market Silk Road incentivized (horrific) drug violence across the US and other countries. The best you could say is that they had no effect on it.
The privilege criticism is that Ulbricht wants leniency despite the overall harm reduction being marginal. It might have been safer for him and for the dealers, but not significantly for any other group.
With darknet markets and independent lab testing networks, this type of thing doesn't happen.
EDIT: This argument would probably hold up a lot better if Ulbricht hadn't tried to have people killed. sigh
It was not a harm-free marketplace. It was basically 'whichever criminal shit made him money' marketplace and drugs happened to top the list.
LOL @ getting down voted by Libertarians for a COMPLETELY TRUE statement that they wish wasn't true because it fucks up their bullshit narrative.
An intelligent, wealthy, employable person can dabble with them, have a good time, and usually get away with it. Should they get addicted and screw up their lives, they can usually get help and bounce back without permanent consequences.
People who're a little less well-off intellectually and economically aren't so resilient. Should they get addicted to hard drugs and screw up their lives, they usually don't bounce back from it - their lives are ruined forever.
Since HN is full of intelligent, wealthy, employable people, the comments on this thread don't surprise me a bit. And yes, I agree that drug policy in the United States could stand to be reformed a little. But when evaluating the harm a person's actions can cause to society, I wish people would think a little more about not just themselves, but that vast chunk of society that's not lucky enough to not be as privileged as we are.
Remember that the first step of the twelve steps is "admitting that one cannot control one's alcoholism, addiction or compulsion". Finding reasons why you are more privileged than others makes this step even harder.
Also, withdrawal is not the major problem when combating addiction.
I do personally know someone whom personally knows others who have directly experienced (high dose cannabis edibles for alcohol addiction). There are many claimed first, second, and third hand reports out on the Internet. There are also quite a few professional documentaries about the topic, many amatuer videos (directly capturing the experience and the people involved). I have also come across some peer reviewed literature as well.
I don't maintain a list of such reports and can't look for them at the moment, but they shouldn't be too difficult to find if you are interested.
It is not 100% effective. Some will definitly not change their behavior much, even though they claimed to want to.
For example: nicotine is much more addictive (has to do with the speed with which tolerance for a substance is increased) than, say, THC. Which is yet again different from LSD. There are a whole host of factors, and a spectrum of "how dangerous $DRUG is".
(disclosure: it's my pet peeve when people make lump statements about "all drugs")
I recommend you reading about the delta FOSB protein. There is promising research towards unifying all, or almost all, addictions with a single, coherent theory. In this light, drugs are really beginning to look very similar to one another.
You can't take drugs 100% safely, but their safety level does vary, and it definitely varies with wealth.
Amphetamines, for example. Rich Americans get prescriptions for Adderall. Poor Americans make meth. Or take opiates. Vicodin vs. heroin.
There are already millions of Americans that started their opioid adventure with oxycodone or hydrocodone, often coming from the "upper spheres". Addiction does not discriminate. Changing the name from amphetamine to Adderal will not give you more control over your addiction. You will have none, regardless of your income level.
You are right about the safety level though, this is about potential short-term complications. Prescription stuff is not contaminated, a doctor can give you some good advice, or a vial of emergency Naloxone.
However, if you are not in such a good financial position, a heroin addiction will almost certainly ruin your life. From the financial burden of the substance itself, to side effects from adulterants and the impredictability of a dose, you roll the dice every time you shoot up.
I guess this depends on your definition of "100% safely", and probably also on your definition of "drugs". Let's assume that "drugs" means "psychoactive drugs". In that case, I'd suggest that you can take a cup of coffee pretty much as close to 100% safely as is achievable for anything in the world that you can ingest. And coffee is psychoactive. So, it is possible to take drugs 100% safely.
Even alcohol can be taken safely: so long as you keep the dose low, and you're not someone with a special sensitivity to it (e.g. an alcoholic), you can have a glass of red wine with pretty much zero chance of anything bad happening.
That also applies to all the other psychoactive drugs in between: speed, cocaine, LSD, heroin, mushrooms, peyote, MDMA, whatever. They can all be taken 100% safely. The key in all cases is always the same: good education and moderation.
All of these drugs can also be abused. You can kill yourself with caffeine too (though unlikely in coffee form - you'd need about 50-100 espresso shots). I recall a story of someone who ate a whole pack of caffeinated candy, thinking it was normal candy, and died.
Shit happens.
Shit happens more often without good research, education and clear guidelines.
Shit happens even more often without good research, education and clear guidelines, and with dodgy suppliers who may or may not be selling you the thing you think you're buying because they're all criminals.
The real culprit in every drug death? The three branches of the government, who have failed to do the right thing on this topic for 50+ years now.
More powerful psychoactives can make education and moderation moot. Then the addictive qualities can drive the user down a well-trodden road. Ignore this at your peril.
I think that"100% safe" is an exaggeration intended to emphasize that the risk is manageable and it would be more polite to simply state that many substances can be ingested with minimal risk.
Aside from that - let's posit that Ross Ulbricht's arrest and punishment and the shutdown of The Silk Road doesn't impact consumption and the consequent negative effects at all. I've still got no real moral qualms about punishing someone who enriches themselves off so much harm to others. Yes, there are many people in this world who do equivalent harm that we don't punish, and that's unfortunate, but that doesn't change the rightness of Ross's punishment one bit.
It seems quite likely that Silk Road was one of the safest ways to acquire these drugs. It seems likely to me that shutting down Silk Road would have two effects: reducing consumption by casual (non-addicted) recreational users who will not bother with less convenient and safe sources, and driving addicted users to less convenient and safe sources. You might argue that the first effect is slightly beneficial, but I think it is far outweighed by the harmfulness of the second effect.
> I've still got no real moral qualms about punishing someone who enriches themselves off so much harm to others.
This is just another way to rephrase the claim that Silk Road did net harm to others, which we were just debating.
It is not. Enriching yourself off of harm to others is a distinct issue from the net harm you're causing in the world.
To use the prosecutor's analogy, a drug dealer who sells an unadulterated product with clean needles does not get a free pass on being a drug dealer.
Spending the money on the Silk Road trial on ads talking about how addictive and dangerous stuff from the pharmacy can be -- even more so than stuff on the street -- and that you need to be careful experimenting with medicines would likely do more to keep people safe from opiates than shutting down Silk Road.
(There's a similar argument to be made about stimulants and ADD/ADHD meds.)
Really, the only things that people can find on Silk Road which doesn't have a ready medical analog that's abused by people all the time is marijuana and hallucinogens -- the drugs on the safest end of the spectrum.
If your conjecture is true, and Silk Road gets people out of their pill cabinet on to safer things to experiment with, then it's actually making people safer to let them explore like that.
The problem with these debates is that drug policy involves a complex network of different pieces that are interlinked, and what seems like a straight forward solution to one issue actually ends up backfiring when the effects move through the network.
I am curious what people think a fair sentence would be, given the sheer amount of drugs sold on SR. Selling over a pound of weed here in NYC will cost you 15 years, which for most people would be about 1/6th of their life.
Also, I am interested with the number of people saying he didn't actually do anything that wrong. I wonder if they are saying the same thing petty drug offenders. Maybe people do but they don't vocalize it, but I think if we saw this kind of empathy for all non-violent drug dealers, things would look very different here in the US.
1. misleading the American public into going to a series of costly wars through lies about WMDs -> not punishable
2. Weakening Glass-Stegal and encouraging questionable and irresponsible risk-taking at major banking institutions -> not punishable
3. Fraudulent evaluation of risk-ratings by trusted agencies for the sake of profit leading to worst financial disaster since great depression -> not punishable, actually, rewarded with billions in bail-out by tax payers
4. setting up and running a website to host underground drug trade with bitcoins -> punishable by life-sentence
Not that what Ulbricht did was right or that he shouldn't be punished... but his biggest problem was that his business didn't generate enough profit at the expense of the public. Justice might be blind, but even she can still smell money.
2. Glass Stegal wouldn't have prevented shit. In fact the combination banks Glass Stegal would have prevented--BoA and Chase--were the banks who were strong enough to absorb the shitty failed banks--merill and lehman--that were often just investment banks.
Taking irresponsible risks isn't a crime either.
3) No evidence of fraud. These agencies trusted the financial models and those models didn't work.
Fuckups aren't punished in our society the way intentional law breaking is.
Should be guillotine every founder whose company fails?
Guillotine, probably not, but I'm okay with punishing every "founder" of a "company" that errantly spends billions of tax dollars on weaponry and uses it to kill tens of thousands of innocent people.
Not meaning to go off on a political tangent, but it seems to me like there was a conscious effort not to ask such questions in an official capacity.
Imagine an alternate universe where we had Watergate-style hearings when Pelosi/Reid took over in 2007, or when the Obama administration started in 2009. In some circles, some people wanted that, and I think rightly or wrongly politicians decided it was not worth it. Easy to forget now, but it was certainly in political discourse 6 to 9 years ago.
Debatable. The justice system hasn't found that, no charges have been filed within the justice system over them.
> Weakening Glass-Stegal and encouraging questionable and irresponsible risk-taking at major banking institutions -> not punishable
While again this is untested directly, the legislative privilege in the Constitution makes this pretty clearly not punishable through the justice system. The punishment that can be dealt out for this is at the ballot box, not through the justice system.
5. Apples are red
6. Oranges are orange
You're comparing facts: "Ulbricht ran The Silk Road," with your own conjecture: "Banks encouraged 'questionable' risk taking." You're making a lot of extraordinary claims that are very very difficult to prove with no evidence to back them up.
And you're using this conjecture as evidence of... something? You don't really make a point. You just repeat popular internet tropes.
When people that have clearly violated the law - like certain people in the CIA, for example - are not even prosecuted, it is hard agree with people that think it is "just" to give someone life in prison for allegedly committing as far lesser crime.
At worst, Ross Ulbricht is accused of an attempted conspiracy of murder. People in the CIA actually killed people, in ways that are always illegal.
A lot of people were defrauded. The economy is still trying to recover. I don't think people who lost homes or are struggling to find work and make ends meet would consider any of this to be an internet trope.
... even though it was well know torture does not produce useful intelligence
... and having ratified (in 1994) the Convention Against torture which includes a duty to prosecute or extradite
... and 18 U.S. Code § 2340A being amended by the "PATRIOT Act" - before the torture occured - to include clause (c) which allows charges and all punishments (except death) to include anyone who conspires to comit torture
-> not even an attempt to prosecute
/* is there a clearer, more obvious way to demonstrate how the US no longer cares about the "rule of law"? perhaps, but I can't think of anything that would top what the CIA has already done /
/* before anybody replies with idiotic claims that somehow it is ok to torture foreigners with claims relating to jurisdictional boundaries, I suggest actually read 18 U.S. Code § 2340A (b) */
That's one of the most ridiculous claims I have seen in a while.
America, for all its prattle about freedom and individualism, is like most other societies an authoritarian collectivist state. Freedom is just a symbol, not a real thing.
You are allowed freedom within certain domains as long as you don't do anything too challenging to the "social fabric." If you do, a whole host both legal and quasi-legal options are deployed against you. Search for "cointelpro" for a good historical example. If you can't be legally prosecuted, you'll be quasi-legally or even illegally harassed and persecuted.
Alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs, but it's legal because "normal" people use it. You can't make being a hippie illegal, but you can intensely prosecute certain things that hippies do. You can't make being black illegal, but you can do the same there -- crack and cocaine are exactly the same chemical, but crack carries a harsher sentence because minorities use it while rich white people largely use cocaine.
The reason a lot of this coalesced around drugs is that the constitution has nothing to say in that department. You can't ban religions, or speech, or styles of dress, but there's nothing in there about a right to sovereignty over your body, and the regulation of trade is explicitly permitted. So drugs, being something that correlates with certain cultures, serves as a wide open legal vehicle for attacking minority populations.
But yea, I believe it is ridiculous as well, but the court needed to voice their opinion with the sentence.
If they didn't, wouldn't necessarily show anything. BMR and Sheep began picking up the drug sales slack immediately, and were around because SR1 had proven the business model worked fantastically well.
But I agree that it's absolutely insane if the charges are just drug-related -- rapists get far less time than many drug dealers.
Whilst I agree he deliberately set up a website designed for use for criminal transactions, I find it ridiculous that everyone (including the courts) would rather focus on people buying drugs online (if that was their big thing, then many of the major early newsgroup operators would be in prison for life, for having not even concealed names for newsgroups deliberately designed for buying and selling drugs), than on the selling of stolen credit cards and other identity theft sales.
Sure, drugs are bad m'kay, and we have to stomp on people who use, buy and sell them or something, but, how many lives are destroyed by identity theft? Or do the courts think that is too complicated for people to understand, whilst the "He let drugs be sold on his website" is something even Fox News can communicate.
edit: this is something that vice news [0] reported that is apparently wrong.
> But despite these setbacks, Ulbricht was ultimately convicted in February on a raft of charges, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, and hiring assassins to take out members of Silk Road.
[0]: https://news.vice.com/article/ross-ulbricht-convicted-master...
Ulbricht's argument to the effect that he wasn't properly charged with the murder-for-hire scheme was addressed in detail by the court:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
It seems to me that if the Feds were confident about their murder-for-hire claim, they would have charged Ulbricht accordingly. That they chose not to do so indicates they were less than confident, and we should draw our conclusions accordingly.
For all I know he may well have been involved in murder for hire; I haven't paid close enough attention to the case to have an opinion. But I've followed too many hacker cases to accept unrebutted DOJ allegations as gospel truth.
Capone went away for tax evasion, right?
The prosecution memo does not rebut this argument, it rebuts instead the clearly different but related argument that the murder-for-hire scheme was uncharged conduct which could therefore not be considered in sentencing. It was -- as they correctly point out -- charged, as it was one of the overt acts specifically laid out in the Count One narcotics trafficking conspiracy charge.
It is nevertheless inaccurate to say he was convicted of hiring a hitman, since a conspiracy conviction requires (as far as overt acts go) only a finding that the defendant committed at least one overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, there were several overt acts charged in that count, and the verdict form did not direct the jury to return separate findings of fact on each charged overt act.
The argument I'm challenging is the notion that the factual claim of Ulbricht's attempt to hire a hitman wasn't subjected to scrutiny during the trial. It was a specifically introduced factual claim, which Ulbricht's counsel was required to rebut.
Apparently his first attempt he hired an fbi agent, posing as a hit man and his second attempt seems to have been a con-job...
He tried though. Apparently the fbi agent sent fake photos as proof.
Article from Ars Comments. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-09/us-says-si...
He was convicted of the following-
Distribution/Aiding and Abetting the Distribution of Narcotics
Distribution/Aiding and Abetting the Distribution of Narcotics by Means of the Internet
Conspiracy to Distribute Narcotics
Continuing Criminal Enterprise
Conspiracy to Commit or Aid and Abet Computer Hacking
Conspiracy to Traffic in Fraudulent Identity Documents
Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering
EDIT. Neat. -3 points for posting nothing but factual information. Cool. I'll leave you all to it, then.
> Distribution/Aiding and Abetting the Distribution of Narcotics by Means of the Internet
Good ol' US justice system: Where you get charged with the same crime twice so they can double the sentence.
This is not quite true. While he was not charged in this trial with the most obvious offense that would flow from that (e.g., attempted murder, etc.), this was specifically charged as one of the overt acts of one of the conspiracy charges he was convicted of. But it wasn't the only overt act charged, and the guilty verdict doesn't include a finding on the individual overt acts charged separately. So, its not accurate to say he was convicted of hiring a hitman.
Or the same. Or more, in the form of the death penalty.
The LD50 was extensively document, your claim is essentially vodoo.
Conclusion: We did not find use of psychedelics to be an independent risk factor for mental health problems.
These were the evaluation criteria: drug-specific and drug-related mortality, drug-specific and drug-related damage, dependence, drug-specific and drug-related impairment of mental functioning, loss of tangibles, loss of relationships, injury, crime, environmental damage, family adversities, international damage, economic cost, and community harm.
Infographic: http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/or...
Original study: Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_old/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf
As a result of my "research", LSD remains one of the few recreational drugs that I might ever consider trying in the future, given the correct circumstances.
It is certainly less harmful than nicotine, ethanol, and acetaminophen. But now that marijuana is legal in some states, I expect that it will soon displace LSD-25 as the least harmful recreational drug that I know about.
If you are also curious, my conclusion was that LSD-25 is probably present in AUM at a psychoactive, but non-hallucinogenic, dose, mostly as an adjuvant for the other ingredients. It would help bridge the gap between a drug known to have powerful, positive, short-term effects and one known to cause long-term but very unpredictable changes in behavior.
[0]- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
[1]- http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/William-Pickard-s-long-s...
[2]- https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/pickard_leonard/
I didn't know he had solicited murder (it's not mentioned in the short article linked) so I was wondering what made a glorified drug dealer middleman deserve life in prison.
I agree that "without parole" is ridiculous.
But the thing is: he wasn't even convicted for that!
Man, that is a bit of a mental stretch to blame drug ODs on the runner of a forum. He did not make the drugs, sell the drugs, or transfer the drugs, but the prosecutors faulted him in the OD of people who used those drugs?
That said, one can't help but wonder if perhaps the movement in which characters as diverse as Assange, Dotcom, Snowden, ThePirateBay and Ulbricht can be placed is too powerful to snub out with mere regulatory reactionism... particularly given the economic state of much of the educated world and the imminent environmental challenges we face as a planet.
If there's one thing that the study of complex systems teach us, it's that there is strength in heterogeneity. Perhaps it's time for America to change its tune and stop pressuring countries worldwide to overpolice their populations in myriad ways (drugs, internet piracy, IP laws). May we live to see more enlightened times, progressive approaches to state-sponsored social remediation, and less of this nationalism "my way or the highway" / "with us or against us" claptrap that Einstein so eloquently summarized: Nationalism is an infantile disease: the measles of mankind.
The difference is he didn't make his black market political, which unfortunately Ross did. He also didn't try to kill anybody which although thrown out was still referenced by the sentencing judge. Still no word on what happened to the guy who was running SR 2.0 who worked for SpaceX and was busted.
I remember people peddling drugs on MindVox forums when Lord Digital ran it back in the day none of this is new except for Ulbricht trying to market his biz as a revolution. Online drug sales will continue regardless of this sentence.
Can someone help me understand why people keep suggesting that this murder-for-hire allegation was dropped? That does not at all seem to be the case.
Painting over it is their only option.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/29/technology/silk-road-ross-ul... "Prosecutors had charged Ulbricht with commissioning six murders-for-hire but those charges were dropped"
The overt act is there in the new indictment they changed after dropping the 6 murder for hire charges, guess it's my fault for trusting journalists who said nothing about it http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...
Was he convicted of this charge you speak of? No. And who really cares what the legal system decides, it is an utter farce.
So why are you convinced he wasn't convicted of this charge?
For a country that prides itself on freedom and fairness, why create a system that punishes for doing what they want with their body? What if we spent the billions we do now on a failed drug war for education, addiction treatment, mental health, job training? Why ban certain drugs and allow alcohol and cigarettes that have just as addictive properties and kills just as many people?
It's not right, its not fair, and until the judicial industrial complex (private prisons, police forces & civil forfeiture used for revenue instead of proper tax increases) is dismantled, we'll continue to see these sorts of travesties.
We have a lot of cruft to cut from the US legal system.
Fuck Russ, and fuck you for repeating the lie that SR was nothing but drugs.
This is not a good prompt for a "war on drugs is evil" rant. I sympathize with the position, but using somebody as an example of supposed injustice, when a big part of his punishment is because he hired hitmen (plural!), is not going to make your point look at all good.
And the alleging being done by someone who is himself in quite a bit of legal trouble for stealing from Silk Road and embezzling bitcoin during the course of his official duties.
Such an ignorant comment it doesn't even deserve to be commented.
His son had started abusing benzos but wanted to try heroin -- he bought some H on the Silk Road and then ODed after trying it once. When they found his body, the computer was literally open to the Silk Road page..
(There were 6 deaths detailed in the sentencing guidelines, so my recounting may be slightly off, but feel free to exchange this one for the 16-year old kid who bought LSD on the SR, had a terrible trip, then jumped to his death off of a balcony)
Making dangerous drugs vastly easier to purchase by those who had no previous source for them isn't harmless.
The more I read about the war on drugs, the sadder I become. I used to be one of those that wanted to leave everything as it is today, and I've changed my mind.
Every single government actor involved in this case is far more guilty than Ross and, frankly, they are the ones that deserve prison.
Yes, Ross should have realized you can't massively break the law and get away with it. He made a big mistake.
But the mistake he made was assuming that other people were more benevolent than they really are.
This young man viewed the world with a child-like, rosy-eyed perspective, and for that, he gets crushed by the boot of government brutality.
Disclaimer: I have no involvement with any dark nets or online drug trade.
edit: I don't know if he hired hitmen and if he did, I suspect it was in his own defense.
Legally, they do not. If you have a problem with that, take it up with (relevant to the federal laws at issue here) the Congress.
Try harder, like by working to convince the public that such a right should exist, so that other people join you in your effort to convince Congress to change the law.
Of course, you haven't provided any argument here for your position on rights, just a bald statement that the right you would like to exist does, as if that were some kind of uncontroversial, universally-accepted thing that required no justification.
Would you like a list of examples where extremely illegal actions are clearly and controversially moral, or can you think of historical examples yourself?
No, I haven't. "Equivocating" is, you know, pretty exactly the opposite of "expressly disambiguating".
> Would you like a list of examples where extremely illegal actions are clearly and controversially moral
Presuming you mean "clearly and uncontroversially", no.
Though if you are arguing that "the right to buy drugs" is in that category, I'd like to see an argument for that.
Unless you live in a jurisdiction where the purchase of narcotics is legal (Mars?) the meaning of "People have a right to buy drugs" is quite clear.
In a world where the laws you invoke are responsible for so much suffering and death, to come in with a "Well, legally" and pretend the moral dimension does not exist is... well, I've already said what that is.
The rule of law and courts were supposed to protect such minorities (ie drug legalization through generalized privacy of Roe v Wade, and trade via the right to free speech). It's pretty fucked up that the legal system has rotted so thoroughly that the courts are harshly persecuting them while the majority of interested people dissent.
Then again, much of that rot is due to the "war on drugs" and its underlying philosophy that people exist to serve their government.
As for having a right to drugs, every man has a right to do what they please with their body.
Actually they don't, which is kind of the point.
Rights are the things that we would all agree should be legally protected if we were all rational about it.
So they're a human construct, but they're still objective.
What "rational", of course, usually means, is "agreeing with me", and so there are so very many false Scotsmen in attendance.
No, I think you're the one who doesn't seem to understand them.
> Rights are the things that we would all agree should be legally protected if we were all rational about it.
We, as a society, have a system in place to work out this sort of thing. That system has already decided that we don't have this right. If you were in fact able to convince enough people that your position is the most rational then your available rights can be changed. Your argument is valid but your conclusion is wrong based on the available facts.
There are lots of definitions of "rational", and I don't think that explanation actually works (or even makes sense) for any of the obvious ones.
But I think the idea of natural rights is dumb. They're made up by humans. They're enforced by humans. Their exact nature is disagreed upon and debated by humans.
The idea that there is some set of core natural rights that comes from somewhere other than humans is a tactic used to avoid debate on which rights we should and should not have by people unwilling to actually support their ideas with facts or reasoning.
You might as well just say that god told us to do it that way.
If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not have democracy, or even republics. We'd have totalitarian nations of smiling slaves.
There wasn't revolution because the people were aesthetically displeased at the fact that their natural rights were being violated. There was revolution because the people wanted something and they were willing to fight for it.
If income inequality keeps going the way it's going, one day we'll see the people revolt against the rich demanding a natural right to housing, medical care, education and who knows what else. You'll, of course, note that particular definition of natural rights far exceeds the Jeffersonian one. It'll be just as an illogical concept then as it is now. It's a nice rhetorical flourish though, and rhetoric goes a long way when you're asking people to risk their lives.
The idea of particular divine ordinances -- which is what doctrines of natural rights are -- are fine ways to organize identity and action around that identity, including revolution.
That that is true doesn't, in any way, make any particular such quasi-religious concept correct. And, even if it did, I can't think of any of those revolutions that included, in their conception of natural rights, a right to buy drugs, as such. So, even operating in such a framework (and even once we've agreed which framework of natural rights we are operating in), you probably have more work to do than just simply asserting it to establish the claim "people have a right to buy drugs" is valid even within that framework.
> If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not have democracy, or even republics.
Yes, most people would agree that there are principals beyond the law that justify arguments about what the law should or should not be, and most would probably even agree that some of those principals are sufficient to justify breaking the law as it stands -- and even to justify soliciting homicides if they are threatened sufficiently.
However, that kind of high-level agreement itself is very different than agreeing that the "right to buy drugs" is in either the first or, more relevant to the claim that the Ulbricht verdict is a miscarriage of justice, the second class of principals.
Accurate slip of the keyboard, given the eroding Constitution.
Rights are what you get if a bunch of rational, self-interested people get together and say, "What ought we be allowed to do without interference?"
There is a single, correct, rational answer to that: you ought to be allowed to do anything that doesn't initiate force against someone else. All rights are a function of that single fundamental observation.
Every rational, fully self-interested person (who has studied the topic a lot) will agree on this.
So that's where rights come from... they are a human construct, but there's also a single, objectively correct answer.
So they don't come from "Laws of Nature" or the Founding Fathers.
Ironically (since you are obviously a rational, self interested person), this statement is objectively false.
Not to detract from your point. I think he deserves life without parole for the attempted hits by themselves, ignoring every other charge. (Despite the fact that's not what he was convicted of.)
Sentence? 12 years.
Rick Ross was sentences to life. For 100kg of cocaine. Sentence was reduced to 20 years.
So, we will see what happens to Ulbricht.
My guess is that the life will stick, though. After all, this involved computers.
Is little else known about this figure, even as he is nearing completion of his prison term?
[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRel09/saran_sen_pr.html
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487038592045755264...
Meanwhile:
> Hu Wanlin was in prison for human trafficking. That didn't stop him from opening a medical practice while jailed. Once he was released after a retrial in 1997, Hu treated hundreds of patients with an herbal remedy that actually contained sodium sulphate. 146 people died of his treatments. He was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for practicing medicine without a license.
146 people dead.. 15 years in prison.
Run a website that helps people connect with drug dealers.. multiple life sentences.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan rejected Ulbricht’s claim that he was naive and impulsive when he started Silk Road as an economic experiment.
“It was a carefully planned life’s work,” Forrest told him Friday. “It was your opus.”
and:
Ulbricht, who plans an appeal, asked for mercy in a May 26 letter to the judge. He called Silk Road a “naive and costly idea” that had ruined his life.
“I’ve had my youth, and I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age,” Ulbricht wrote. “Please, leave a small light at the end of the tunnel.”
So much for mercy.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road-...
People should read some of the background, including haggling over the cost of a murder for hire. - http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/
Truth is, it's hard to run this sort of thing without getting ripped off, and then violence is the only way to discourage people from ripping you off. Watch Godfather movies, esp. part 2... Mafias arise out of human nature and the nature of the game.
One of the many ironies of libertarian extremists is that actions which are considered illegitimate when taken by a democratic government become OK when taken by concentrated private power to protect private property.
Huh? Libertarian extremists do not condone murder or murder-for-hire. Most libertarian extremists also support proportional self-defense and damages doctrine (Rothbard et al) so would not consider murdering someone who steals from you acceptable.
That was the situation here; party A attempts to blackmail party B with revealing the identities of group C to entity D which will then ruin the lives of all people within group C. Is it definitely right or wrong to hire somebody to kill party A? What duty of care does party B owe group C? Entity D exists and is not going away and will continue to behave in the fashion which party A relies upon as the stick in the equation. Attacking entity D directly is suicidal and ineffective.
If party A was directly threatening to kidnap and imprison or murder all the people in group C, I think aggressive action against them would be much less questionable, and effectively that is what they are actually doing, given the behaviour of entity D.
Putting all those pieces in place already, what is the appropriate response supposed to actually be?
Any way you look at it, it's certainly an interesting situation that people who otherwise would think there was no problem here must take into account. It's all well and good to believe the state is a gang of thieves and murderers writ large (disclaimer; I certainly do), and go about constructing a parallel strategy to circumvent them, but that strategy can't just ignore them, or the consequences of their existence, either.
I wonder how things would have turned out without the murder for hire angle.
Ross is 31 years old, so he may live for 40 years. That mean imprisoning this man will cost the US taxpayer 1.4 million USD in lifetime cost.
This doesn't take into account opportunity cost, expenses for trial, the cost of the drug war, and so on.
[1] http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2...
Lovely.
I see an issue with treating drug users (esp. recreational drug users) as somehow "less than human" because of their choices. If a heroin user dies or contracts disease from using a dirty needle, that is a sad thing and I would applaud a dealer who hands out clean needles to his clients to prevent it. Regardless of my stance on drugs and drug users.
(And that's not even getting into the issue of whether we should be allowed to have drugs as supposedly free people)
(Libertarians say hi.)
The justice system only sees them as "less than human" until they can conveniently be used to create an emotional scene which can be used as ammo against someone the government doesn't like.
See: the poor defenseless kid who would still be alive today if it weren't for the silk road forcing him to buy drugs and take them
Ross was tempted by helping to increase supply. Maybe if we had a legal and regulated location where you could do any drugs but under the supervision of counselors we could help reduce demand and end the cycle.
I believe a church in the Netherlands did this in their basement. They provided discounted heroin that could only be used there and addicts reduced their consumption and had access to counselors.
I am not supporting what Ross did to give access to illegal drugs, I just believe because there is such demand trying to reduce supply is a losing battle where only law enforcement equipment supply companies win.
Can't help but counter this claim by stating that buying drugs via Silk Road is probably not very destructive in any sane analysis, especially compared to street level drug dealing.
There's no corners to hold, no rivals to fight with territory over, no deals to go bad, no real access by minors, and no real impedance to the function of any tangible physical location or bystander.
Seriously. The way he invokes the words "our social fabric" makes it out like Forrest was personally affected. It's easy to imagine Urlbricht rehabilitating and becoming a productive member of society but instead his life has just been destroyed. It's not justice and it's not the right thing to do.
If one person decides to put another person in a cage for the rest of their life, it's clearly a horrendous stomach turning crime. It's no less horrendous when the justice system does it. But we've decided that it's a necessary evil that society requires. We should be working as a society to minimize the necessary evil and rehabilitate people but we're not and it's a tragedy.
Just to throw out an observation: the idea that being in this business kicked off a spiral of actions which led to him being "crazy and desperate" to the point of trying to have people killed is precisely the argument that's been made by people who support the drug war, about the slippery slope of consequences that follow from getting involved with drugs.
I am not sure why someone who so perfectly embodies the other side's narrative is being held up as a shining heroic example by supporters of legalization.
Of course, liberating music was hardly as valuable to society as removing the need for bloodbaths to distribute drugs. But what are you going to do.
Just like the not-very-explicit "murder for hire" used to justify the astonishing sentence given Ulbricht.
That sounds like something from the 19th century.
1) Be careful how your promote your criminal enterprise (early bitcoin talk pages about silk road are from Ross)
2) Don't commit a crime to cover up a lesser crime (Covering up running silk road by trying to commit murder by hire)
3) regularaly check the IP of your service that is running a TOR site. Requests sent to that IP should have been blocked.
The whole of morality is not contained by the law. How about those folks who broke apartheid law by going to the University of Alabama? I stipulate that operational security is not exactly part of breaking apartheid laws, but still...
Copyright laws are going way way overboard. How about breaking those laws in order to expose corruption? That could happen, easily. "Don't commit serious crimes" is advice for the conformist.
Going to UofA during segregation wasn't a serious crime.
As a practical matter, civil disobedience is most effective when you aren't committing serious crimes.
Throwing a rock through a window to support coffee farmers in Guatemala is one thing. Bombing a logging operation is quite another.
Even if you think you are being moral, it's really stupid to commit serious crimes.
Effect might perhaps be to drive others who are or want to do this stuff to operate from Russia or other harder to reach places. It might have been wiser to keep him operating and under long term surveillance, and as such indirectly control the beast he created.
People seem to be hinging their "this is a relatively fair judgement" opinions on the fact that he attempted to/hired one or more hitmen for one or more hits...
If that's what they're prosecuting on, then there's precedent, right? Is that precedent life in prison?
While I don't agree/defend what Ulrich was doing, I think the sentence is heavy-handed. I think arguments can be made for life in prison being worse (or more cruel) than death. And if we compare his crimes to some of the things governments do (or allegedly do) behind closed doors, I wonder if this is really "justice".
I don't know if there's much merit to him "more safely distributing drugs", but I wonder if a sentence this heavy would have been issued elsewhere outside the US.
[EDIT] - Reading other posts, it seems like he wasn't actually charged/convicted for the attempted murder/hitman stuff. If that wasn't the case, then I disagree with the verdict that much more
[EDIT2] - People who are under the impressions that Snowden should have stayed in the US to face proper sentencing should also note the sentencing in this case. Circumstances are different, but, I'm pretty sure Snowden could have faced worse, since Treason is pretty high up there (and makes you eligible for the death penalty). Ironic given that we (american culture) iconize Nathan Hale ("I regret that I have but one life to give...")
Ross Ulbricht, who is tragically falsely accused of running Silk Road, is a hero for challenging the War on Drugs by definitely not selling drugs, and a nice guy.
The government said they identified six individuals who overdosed and died of drugs they purchased on Silk Road. The parents of two of those individuals—25-year-old Bryan B. from Boston and 16-year-old Preston B. from Perth, Australia—spoke at Friday’s sentencing, pleading emotionally to the judge to give Mr. Ulbricht a harsh sentence.
More people die of prescription and OTC drugs.
Great. Now that we have a solid benchmark for the minimum level of criminality possible to get a lifetime imprisonment sentence, we can finally start prosecuting those responsible for the financial fraud that caused the last recession. It was pretty destructive to our social fabric. There was a lot of bar-lowering going on, too.
Right?
Hello?
Anyone?
[mic goes dead, and house lights shut off]
I guess I'll just go home, then.
In light of the differential between the outcomes of prosecutions of highly publicized crimes, I think perhaps he was convicted for "failing to pay the minimum campaign contributions tax and lobbying tax on filthy lucre" and also got the mandatory minimum sentence for "we need to make a really big example of this guy because we are totally unprepared to handle anyone smarter and more cautious than him", with just a little shot of "X on the Internet is a thousand times worse than X in person".
http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/10/news/companies/hsbc-money-la...
With a lot of grass in his hand
Ah but the pusher is a monster
Good god he's not a natural man
The dealer, for a nickel lord
He'll sell you lots of sweet dreams
Ah but the pusher'll ruin your body
Lord he'll leave, he'll leave your mind to scream
Either way, people don't question these punishments because they don't fear them. And the don't fear them because they don't aspire to be drug lords or murderers.
This is not a surprising outcome in any way, and his use of the Internet rather than traditional methods absolves him of nothing.
edit: I also understand the point that his hiring the hitman was an overt act under one of the other charges, but, speaking as someone who is not a lawyer, it seems to me that such a weighty punishment should have to be based on a much more explicit charge than this. I sincerely doubt that they would have been able to make the case for life in prison if not for the murder-for-hire angle, and as such i think it should have been charged. This seems like a dishonest and sneaky way to prosecute someone. Of course, i have my biases.
We're in a day and age where people can cause tremendous harm to others using their mind alone, without throwing a punch or pulling a trigger. Just because he didn't personally cause physical harm to people doesn't mean he can't cause it to happen!
I think it's important for society to be protected from people with his mindset.
Punishing him for that without trying him for it seems like punishment without trial, which is bad. The alternative is that this punishment is just for nonviolent stuff, for which it seems excessive.
No attempted murder charges though.
This man is literally going to jail forever on the charge of proividing people a place to buy opium. Maybe he tried to hire hits, but that didn't make the final conviction list, though some in this thread are trying to say that "narcotics conspiracy" is a broader charge that somehow? includes murder for hire charges.
Silk road 2 has already been busted.
Some may hail this sentence as a victory for justice or some similar nonsense, but there is a deeper problem here. Civil liberties continue to be eroded at an extremely alarming rate in this country that the concept of "justice" applies in a very political context. It's pretty much a joke.
The message here is that if you attempt to live outside of this current system, you will be punished.
Certainly his actions were destructive to a social fabric, or elements thereof. However, I don't think that anyone of good sense takes too seriously the nightmarish visions of a total collapse of order that Forrest's words summon to mind if the site had been left to run. The alternatives do not reduce to the current structure of a fabric and no fabric at all.
Nor does the charge itself make any particular sense, at least in terms of ideals to hold to. Progress is always built on the destruction, partial or total, of a previous way of life. Thus, when destruction becomes impossible, the liabilities that history places upon us, both in terms of mistakes and in terms of functions which no longer match the demands of life, come to dominate all attempts to adapt society to a more fitting form.
The sentence is, at least on those grounds, a farce. Some social fabrics should be destroyed - that something better may take their place. I'm not going to advocate either way on whether that's the case here, but to imprison someone simply because they perform an act with such a function is to reduce yourself to a tyrant.
I say this as someone who just found out he's had $500 stolen from him. Of course I half blame the banks and credit card processors who allow card numbers to be passed around so easily.
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-...
"In any case, I decided to rewrite the site in an mvc framework as suggested by my benevolent hacker adviser. So, while still manually processing transactions and responding to a bigger and bigger message load, I learned to use codeigniter and began rewriting the site."
One of the greatest tragedies of prohibition (and there are a multitude), is that it transfers so much money and other resources into the hands of existing criminal organisations. It also creates criminals as these profits incentivise illicit trade and legislates users as criminals.
That being said, what Ulbricht was doing was clearly nefarious and the punishment should come as no surprise.
Narcotics trafficking, distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet, and conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identification documents, participation in narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2014/08/25/alleged-si...
> His lawyer, Joshua L. Dratel, in submissions to the judge, argued that the website’s “harm reduction” ethos made it safer than traditional drug dealing on the street.
> But prosecutors, in their memo, argued that praising Silk Road for “harm reduction measures” was “akin to applauding a heroin dealer for handing out a clean needle with every dime bag: The point is that he has no business dealing drugs in the first place.”
When one side of the argument is based in real-world impacts, and the other side has nothing but an appeal to existing rules, it's a pretty good indication that the rules need changing.
It's an infuriating power play to say "you had no business doing that" if you can't come up with a good reason why not.
On a side note, I do think if a heroin dealer gave away a clean needle, that would be commendable.
And the American legal conscience unfortunately has a very high shock threshold these days, as does the population in general. I mean, look at how many people cheerfully support torture despite the massive intellectual and ethical pitfalls involved. Many of those people are also indifferent to the Constitutional basis of the judicial branch and start foaming at the mouth any time a court says a piece of legislation is unconstitutional.
If the defense had made the harm reduction argument in the context of the guilty/not-guilty question, that would be one thing. But in the sentencing phase, it seems appropriate to take into account the actual harm of the crimes involved.
When the prosecution's answer to this discussion of harm is "it doesn't matter, it was illegal," that's when I get cranky.
This is a big problem with victimless crimes and offenses against the public welfare. The extent of actual harm to actual people cannot be easily measured, so there is no rational limit upon punishments levied against the offenders.
Evidence that a criminal intentionally acted in such a way as to reduce the potential harms wrought by his crimes is VERY relevant to sentencing, in my opinion. The same holds true for malice and negligence.
For instance, if you sell heroin, that's illegal. If you refused to sell heroin to people younger than 18, and also embargoed and beat the excrement out of anyone you discovered to be passing heroin on to minors, that would still be pretty awful. But it would also show that you were making some attempt to be less awful than you could be. If, perhaps, you kidnapped any customer who lost his job, and forced him to dry out and clean up in your own private rehab, that would still be pretty nasty. But it would also show a commitment to reduction of harm. You should probably get a below-median sentence, as punishments for drug kingpins go.
Contrariwise, if you keep your drug stash and your loaded shotgun in your baby's crib, then screw you, buddy; you're getting the maximum on all counts.
You mean the ones whose provision making them mandatory was struck down as a violation of the right to trial by jury in 2005, and which have since been advisory only? [0]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Sentencin...
One side is based on a "claimed" real-world impact. Its somewhat plausible but ultimately isn't backed by real evidence.
Maybe this "harm reduction" argument here is full of it, I don't know. All I'm saying is: if one side uses as their only argument "because I said so," then there is no real debate.
An act becoming legal after one has been sentenced for it generally has no effect on past sentences. Executive actions like pardon are possible, but are not in any way necessarily impacted by changes in the legality of the act for which one was convicted. (Though, the same changes in the political landscape which produce changes to the law may influence the politics of discretionary executive actions like pardons.)
It boils down to intent. If you intend to make a legitimate platform for commerce that also happens to be used for illegal stuff, (Craigslist, for example) you're in the clear as long as you aren't actively aiding them.
In contrast, if you set up your platform with the explicit intention of selling illegal goods, then you're in trouble.
* I'm sorry for using the word "disruptive".
I have the same amount of guilt you do when I use that word. But in this case I think it was probably the best word. Annoying when normal words get reclassed into buzzwords.
They're not liable because a few snook through their defences. They'd be liable if they had no defences.
Context and intent are important and laws aren't computer programs.
I hope we can change the way our society punishes it's members.
Kind of suggests he hasn't even been online since the day he was arrested, crazy!
Torture people for the government and you dont even get a warning.
How do people continue believe they live in a society governed by law? It governed by naked, corrupt power.
Another scary thing is how many people have "convicted" this guy of things that he was never convicted of, and used those things as a point from which to justify his sentence here.
Or if you want to go straight to the source, see item 10b on page 5 of: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...
As far as I can tell, the only reason people are saying he wasn't convicted of murder for hire is because the top-level charge is "conspiracy" or somesuch, with "murder for hire" as one of the specific conspiracy items, and they haven't dug down.
Wrong, you're son would be here if you were a better parent.
For some kids better parents mean better behavior. But some kids will act badly no matter what their parents do.
It sucks to say this, but some people just have bad genes, and there is nothing someone outside can do to help.
Honestly, I don't have much sympathy for him directly (due to his complete and utter stupidity and lack of opsec), but I know this is going to hurt some people I care about, people who were good friends with Ross back in college, and I feel bad for them.
Intransigent. Set a log on fire, keep warm. Set a house on fire, get convicted of insurance fraud and arson.
With the same set of actions & work, pointing in a different direction, he could have done quite well for himself working on another idea.
I'm guessing his biggest downfall really was in having an aversion to working with others. He could work with others at a startup and make some great stuff & quite possibly do well. Instead, he chose a more sure fire approach to making money on his own -- with the morality and legality of what he was doing as the cost.
You can find further details here: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864
It's written by an actual lawyer, in spite of being in comic format.
You run a business in the 1800s that frees blacks from the South and transports them to the North. If caught, you risk some severe penalties, maybe even death.
Someone finds out and blackmails you. What do you do?
EDIT: Also, in your example, this was eventually fixed by changing the law, not by breaking it. And, to the best of my knowledge, everyone ran the underground railroad for free, not for profit.