Second U.S. Agent Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bitcoin Theft
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Given what we know about the coercive nature of the plea system in the US, which frequently forces people to plead guilty even when they're innocent, to avoid a very expensive, long, and likely "unhappy-ending" trial, is it possible that these FBI agents are actually innocent and simply being coerced into filing guilty pleas to turn 20 year sentences into 5 year sentences?
I mean, this is almost a banana republic we're talking about here after all. What was the percentage of people putting in guilty pleas who are innocent? I can't find the article but I recall it was quite high. If we apply this line of thinking to people we like, we should also apply it to people we don't like.
This is because anytime there is an absolute chance they'll lose, they drop the case.
And if the case is less than a 100% guaranteed slam dunk, they'll ask for a plea so it'll never go to trial.
Prosecutors cherry pick their trials. It's not possible for every prosecutor everywhere to keep a 98%+ average trial conviction rate in a normal system.
Edit: I'd really like to see how all the downvoters would like to defend their stance. It's obvious that prosecutorial misconduct is not happening when prosecutors abandon cases that are marginal, but when they are harassing people they don't have a chance of getting convicted.
Unless you want to assume that the court is so broken, it will willy-nilly convict innocents.
But then it doesn't matter much what the prosecutor does, then the justice system is utterly broken.
Racial disparities, emphasis on victimless crime, asset forfeiture, prison overcrowding, and oh, the fact that USA has a much higher incarceration rate than any comparable polity ever in the history of the human race.
E.g. a society is generally entitled to criminalize activities it does not want people to engage in. That some other people may perceive the crimes as "victimless" is neither here nor there. I'd imagine that very few people convicted of drug crimes are not in fact guilty of those crimes, because the evidence in those cases is usually overwhelming (e.g. caught with physical product in hand).
Similarly, the U.S. has had about 5-10x the murder rate of, say, the U.K., going back probably a century or more, long before the recent rise in incarceration rate. So the fact that the U.S. has a high incarceration rate does not by itself mean that innocent people are being put in prison.
And anyone is ever guilty only because we define it to be so. In the state of nature, robbing a store and killing the clerk is simply the stronger animal exercising its free will over the weaker. And if robbery is illegal because we say so, I fail to see how the robber is less guilty of the crime because one country punishes him with 3 years in prison while we punish him with 10.
I don't see "don't smoke or sell pot" anywhere in the Ten Commandments.
For one, they are obligated to investigate any exonerating evidence and circumstances, and any exculpatory circumstances. All of this must be revealed fully to the court and the defense, prior to the main trial.
For another, they must only charge when they believe that a conviction is more probable than an acquittal ("my chances are at best 20%, but let's see how it goes" would be clear misconduct).
In practice, the conviction rates are more than 90%, for sure (if you count a conviction for a lesser crime).
As a prosecutor once told me: trials can be freak events. After listening to the witnesses firsthand, or after some dramatic revelation, everything can look much different than it looked in the file. But other than that, they almost always win at least partially.
And another reason is workload. Apart from really high profile, highly publicized cases, resources are extremely limited and prosecutors mostly try to close the files.
Sometimes that's a risk worth taking, but not often. Acquittals are a bad thing.
But I think you're right: I think it's desirable that prosecutors let go of most cases in which they're not confident of a win. That's called "prosecutorial discretion". If caseloads are high, we want them working on the clearest-cut violations --- maybe with some public policy stretch cases sprinkled in.
Let me rewind a little bit in my own life. I probably could have fought my charges a little more, but the risk outweighed the reward. You go to trial and anything can happen. Was I 100% innocent, no. Was I 100% guilty, no. But because at the time I was arrested my co-defendant had disappeared (I believe he is still wanted but I have never followed up and the past is the past to me) the focus of the prosecutor at that moment in time was squarely on me. The prosecutors offered me a plea that was almost too good to turn down. Looking back, and after talking to a bunch of people, I probably should not have taken the plea, but you can't go through life second guessing your decisions.
Knowing what I know now, IMO, the better your plea deal the less confident the prosecutor feels about the case. I was looking at a minimum 10 year sentence. I took a plea for one year supervised probation. I took the plea for several reasons. First, going to trial would have cost me at bare minimum $50,000-60,000 in attorney costs (contrary to popular belief your ability to obtain a public defender is based on your income, and assets you have access to, and I did not qualify). As it was I had already spent close to $12,000 on attorneys. The second reason I chose the plea over trial was that going to trial would have been a long, drawn out process where the result may or may not have gone in my favor. You are putting your life in the hands of a judge or jury. In the end my decision to take the plea boiled down to cost and knowing that within 1 year I would be done with everything and could move on with my life. If I had gone to trial, it would have cost a lot more and at the time I was finishing probation I would probably just be going to court. I took it as an easy way to lick my wounds, learn from my experience, and put my life back on track quickly.
Funny side story of it all. When I first started discussing costs with my attorney I asked him what his thought was on total costs. He replied that there were two questions he had for me in determining cost. First, did I want him to play golf with both the judge and the prosecutor, or just the prosecutor. And, the second question was how many games of golf I wanted him to play with them. I laughed and told him as many as it takes. Looking back part of me thinks he may not have been joking. Our legal system is full of I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine scenarios.
Reminds me of the time I was learning to drive a stick shift in west texas. My dad was in the passenger seat, and was giving me tons of grief for rolling through a stop sign while paying too much attention to the clutch.
We stopped at a gas station, and a local cop pulled into the pump next to ours. My dad, to tease me, asked the cop how much a ticket for rolling through a stop sign would be.
The cop said "About $100. But let me give you some advice. If you offer the officer the $100 right then and there, you'll save a lot of time and paperwork, and your insurance won't have to find out about it, which can save you more in the long run. It really pays to keep some extra cash in your car."
My dad went poker-faced and said "Thank you for the advice", and then he drove us back home and said "Forget everything that man said.
What would you do in this situation? Even if he was completely innocent, the temptation to go home right now, to end the nightmare, must be absolutely huge. I can only guess that there are thousands of people like this in US.
1) Police do not take investigating their own lightly and thus most likely have very strong evidence.
2) I don't know the details of these fellows' careers, but presumably they know procedure, know good defense attorneys and would be far more capable of assisting in their own defense than the average citizen.
So between 92% and 98% of the time, plea bargaining gets things right. The "beyond a reasonable doubt" jury trial standard is unlikely to be more than 95% and is in practice probably 90% or lower: http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/2014/09/proof-beyond-re.... So if the 2-8% error rate is correct, it's not clear that plea bargaining leads to more innocent people being convicted than jury trials.
Moreover, it's unclear to me that you can do much better than 90-95% accuracy. Say you set the threshold at 99.9%, only convicting when the proof is overwhelming. What would be your rate of false negatives (i.e. where you let a guilty person go)? And how would society react to that? There's a false negative rate beyond which people will push back on the court system as being too lenient on the accused. You can already see this in areas of the law where proof is difficult. For example, I think the crazy administrative proceedings for rape cases in college campuses arose, in part, because of the difficulty of holding guilty people accountable in the court system.
It would seem to be terribly high, if you take the number of people in jail in the USA as an input and you work out the numbers that comes down to 2% of 2.3M which is 46,000 and 8% of 2.3M which is 184,000!
That should have something in it that allows comparisons to be made.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pri... ("If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States.")
What differs is that we keep them there much longer. Cocaine trafficking will get you a few years in Canada in most provinces, versus 5 years minimum in the U.S. and potential 10 or 20 depending on quantity and prior convictions. There is no three strikes law in Canada. In the U.S. many states will give you a life sentence for three violent felonies (in California, even three non-violent felonies).
"Q: How many men and women are in a Canadian prison on a given day? A: In 2010/2011,on a given day 38,219 adults [1] and 16,279 youth (aged 12 to 17 years) [2] were in custody in Canada (federal and provincial), for a total of 54,498 inmates.
2,818 were in custody in British Columbia’s provincial correctional system. [1] 13,758 were in federal custody. [1] In total, just over 24,461 adults were admitted to provincial or territorial jails in 2010/2011. [1]
However there were only 10,916 admissions into provincial or territorial custody to serve a sentence. The difference is accounted for by the number of people held in remand while awaiting their trial or sentencing.[3] "
http://ccphe.ubc.ca/resources/general-information-on-canadia...
That at least answers the question, even though it doesn't agree with what I read earlier.
I'm sorry but you are quoting an article that doesn't give a proper citation for this at all, so please don't rely on these probably woefully underestimated numbers. I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me if I missed their source though, but for now;
What few criminologists? How do they know there are only a few? Did they do a survey or what papers are they basing this on?
This lack of sourcing undermines the rest of your comment, not to mention you imply that the jury trial standard is "90% or lower" when you don't even specify that what you link is related to tax crimes only...
"Moreover, it's unclear to me that you can do much better than 90-95% accuracy."
Again, you basically smushed these numbers in to fit your narrative, and they are not reliable at all, so your entire argument falls flat.
" What would be your rate of false negatives (i.e. where you let a guilty person go)? And how would society react to that?"
In a society that values the principles of law and the rule of law, it is better to let a guilty man go than an innocent one, given that they should be innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately our society seems less and less inclined to care about the rule of law, so I'm guessing "society" wouldn't give a fuck about a few more guilty people being let free, just like they don't really seem to give a fuck about innocent people being jailed.
Sorry if I'm being to negative, I just really don't understand where you were trying to go with your comment and it's bad statistics. Feel free to elaborate and correct me.
Underestimated?
They're already huge!
You also misinterpreted the contents of my link. It's on a tax crime blog, but the text is clear that the author is talking about perceptions of the reasonable doubt standard in general ("In a criminal tax prosecution, just as any other criminal prosecution, the Government bears the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.")
> In a society that values the principles of law and the rule of law, it is better to let a guilty man go than an innocent one, given that they should be innocent until proven guilty.
Every heuristic system of decision will have false positives and false negatives. You can ensure zero false positives, but at the cost of 100% false negatives. If you have any criminal justice system, you'll put innocent people in prison. The social debate is just about how many you're willing to put in prison to reduce the false negative rate to a socially acceptable level.
[1] This exchange in the New York Book Review regarding Judge Rakoff's editorial is also worth reading: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/18/plea-ba.... It contains letters from Robert Swartz (Aaron Swartz's father), and Judge Michael M. Baylson, as well as a response by Judge Rakoff.
I understand that, and what I am saying is that I don't care if the person who wrote the editorial was a judge or any other person, his numbers aren't cited in any way shape or form and are left to rest completely on his laurels. That's fine for an op-ed, but you then latching onto those numbers, even with a qualifier, still undermines your position on the matter.
"You also misinterpreted the contents of my link."
Indeed, I seem to have focused too much on the tax crime angle, so I'll cede this point, but I still think that the numbers backing your linked blog are dubious, eg;
"In one study of his 10 of his colleagues by Judge Weinstein..."
"In a larger survey of federal judges throughout the country... Of the 171 judges who responded"
"ther attempts at empirical studies of these issues show that judges and suggest that jurors are all over the lot on the issue."
All I am saying is this: Show me the empirical studies and not the hugely biased numbers from some small pool of judges being asked how they rate their average conviction probability.
Sorry for the haste and missteps in my original comment.
Your bias comment also makes no sense. The bias in Judge Rakoff's article, to the extent it exists, is to cite higher than a 2-8% number because he's arguing against guilty pleas. And in the surveys the bias runs in the opposite direction: to make the reasonable doubt standard seem more stringent than it actually is. A judge saying that he only requires 75% probability of guilt to sustain a conviction is contrary to his self-interest.
There is a huge problem with the US criminal court system (I personally think it's almost entirely product of ludicrous oversentencing, the product of the 1970s-1980s "war on crime"). But I don't think it's helpful to point fingers at parts of the process that are unrelated to those problems.
That sounds like a classic false dichotomy. How about less plea bargaining and more resources for the courts so they don't have require massive delays to deliver justice.
I doubt you'd feel the current system was just if you experienced what Browder went through. How about a little empathy.
It's perfectly fair that they get a pass for presenting society's side in a trial but when they get to wield plea bargains for the sole benefit of their own career it's nearly privateering.
I think if we dialed sentences back to reasonable levels, a huge fraction of offenders would be able to plead out to non-custodial sentences, and because their BATNAs would be improved, people facing marginal charges would have a much easier time squaring off against prosecutors who would be much more likely to back down if a trial win was still likely to do little more than produce a probation sentence.
It's worth remembering though: most people incarcerated in the US are not incarcerated for drug crimes. Domestic violence and property crimes appear to dominate US metro incarcerations.
The real irony here is before I took the case, the Client tried to waive the proceeding motioning the Court for voluntary departure [1], basically agreeing to pay his own way back to his home country without trial, but ICE objected because they wanted to win at trial and have my Client barred from reentry. The twist is, without an attorney my Client won the trial because by law was clear the underlying crime did not subject my Client to removal proceedings...and of course without any legal justification ICE appealed which is around the time I took the case pro bono...after everything my Client still wanted to just voluntarily leave the Country, forego the appeal just to get the hell out of Krome/detention and even having lost the trial ICE and not much of a chance on appeal, against my advice I motioned again for Voluntary Departure and ICE still objected.
If you run away with a bag of cash, you'll get (metaphorically) beheaded.
If you and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Countrywide run away with a bag of cash, prepare for a fairly bad spanking.
Edit: phrasing
I think you made a mistake. First sentence is supposed to be, "he has you by the balls."
...
>Bridges allegedly filed an affidavit for a warrant to seize the Mt. Gox Co. exchange, where Silk Road bitcoins were stored, and its owner’s bank accounts two days after he had taken his own money out of it, according to the criminal complaint.
this couple of bad FBI apples obviously can't cast any doubt onto the integrity of the rest of the FBI Silk Road team (consisting mainly of pure-breed white knights in shiny Lexuses) nor onto the integrity of the whole investigation and conviction....... The trial was 3 ring circus beyond reasonable doubt. F&cking clowns. It isn't the issue whether DPR was this guy or not, or whether he really hired a killer. The issue is that my taxes are extorted from me in order to, supposedly, finance justice process, and what i've got for my money was a show so lame that it wasn't worth even a rotten tomato to throw at it.
In the light of the so far surfaced crimes by the FBI agents the epic heroic story http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/ looks like a new story:
"DPR believed that Nob was a Puerto Rican cartel middleman named Eladio Guzman, but he was in fact DEA agent Carl Force. Force had spent more than a year developing his undercover identity on Silk Road in an effort to get close to DPR. They’d become confidants, spending nights chatting at such length that DPR trusted Nob when he needed enforcement muscle.
It was Nob whom DPR hired to kill his employee, Curtis Green. Force then coerced Green into faking his own death as a ruse. Force was surprised to see DPR’s moral collapse up close, but then again, he’d seen this kind of thing before, during his younger DEA years in undercover. He too had experienced the temptations that came with a double identity. In fact, his secret life as a hard-partying operator had nearly destroyed his regular life. He’d left all that behind and recommitted himself to Christ. The Silk Road case was his first undercover role since those days, and it was a big one. Because of his tenure online as Nob, Force was able to carry out the supposed “hit” on Green, setting DPR up for a murder conspiracy indictment while at the same time cementing their relationship. Nob and DPR had become comrades-in-arms."
I mean, obviously, this heroic Force whose court testimonies and affidavits sent the guy for life couldn't be the same Force who stole the money. I mean we're talking about commitment to Christ after all... Did i mention clowns?
And this one is the icing - http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2015/03/31/force-and-...:
"A state’s witness took the fall for an agent’s theft, thus becoming the target for a murder-for-hire—a murder that was then faked by the same agent. The Silk Road case was compromised again and again as Force and Bridges allegedly took every opportunity to embezzle and steal money. With so much bitcoin on their hands, the two had to coax various bitcoin and payments companies to help convert their ill-gotten gains to dollars. When companies resisted, investigations were launched, subpoenas were issued, and civil forfeitures were sought in retaliation."
There was no affidavit or testimony by Force or Bridges, as far as I know. Please source that if true.
this is Ulbricht's murder-for-hire case in Maryland (the undercover agent in the indictment is obviously Force). That murder-for-hire charge has strongly affected the New York case, in particular it was the basis for denying bail to Ulbricht, not disclosing prosecution witnesses until the trial, and was also used as a strong argument in support of suppressing Ulbricht's 4th Amendment rights (http://www.scribd.com/doc/238796613/Silk-Road-Prosecution-4t...). After all, the FBI stole the Ulbricht's laptop from the library. And obviously such murder charge "helped" the Judge to make up her mind, especially with respect to sentencing, and prepare her Grand Condemnation Speech (and to not let the Speech go waste the Judge didn't let the Ulbricht's defense to bring up the Force's and Bridge's crimes while that murder charge based on the Force's testimonies was heavily affecting the case).
You're conflating different charges here.
"After all, the FBI stole the Ulbricht's laptop from the library."
Don't see how that's relevant.
> And obviously such murder charge "helped" the Judge to make up her mind, especially with respect to sentencing, and prepare her Grand Condemnation Speech (and to not let the Speech go waste the Judge didn't let the Ulbricht's defense to bring up the Force's and Bridge's crimes while that murder charge based on the Force's testimonies was heavily affecting the case).
They weren't allowed to bring it up publically, but they argued in front of the Judge all they wanted, so the claim that it affected the judge is irrelevant. The only people who couldn't see it that mattered was the jurt, but you'd have to claim that evidence gathered by Force/Bridges was brought up in court; that is not true, as far as I know.
There was sufficient evidence of the murder for hire charges just from the laptop seized with no input from Force.
The total was 6.
>not all which were linked to Force. They don't rely on his testimony or affidavit.
You're right :) The other 5 didn't have even as much as the words of criminally crooked DEA agent behind them and thus quietly disappeared.
>You're conflating different charges here.
No, the Maryland case is exactly that 1 last murder-for-hire claim left - of SR employee CCG (Green) which is based on Force's testimony.
>"After all, the FBI stole the Ulbricht's laptop from the library."
>Don't see how that's relevant.
As i already explained (and you can google it yourself), that charge was used by prosecution to argue to suppress (and the suppression was granted) the 4th Amendment defense's motion.
>so the claim that it affected the judge is irrelevant.
Judge denied bail and denied disclosure of witnesses to defense because of that charge. How that can be said irrelevant? Judge sentenced Ulbricht to life, harshest possible sentence here. Obviously it was relevant here too.
>There was sufficient evidence of the murder for hire charges just from the laptop seized with no input from Force.
Until you was on that Maryland Grand Jury and witnessed yourself how the Jury guessed just from the laptop that the "Nob" was an undercover agent who was working on the case since specific date in 2012 ... As they clearly state in the indictment that it was such an undercover agent, thus they must have heard the testimony by Force, and thus whether this testimony was necessary is really a moot point because they did heard it and gave appropriate weight to it. Arguing after-the-fact that some "poisoned fruit" wasn't important would be an obvious loophole around "no fruit of poisoned tree" principle and thus isn't acceptable. And by the way, the laptop was stolen illegally, the 4th Amendment violation. And now see above about the 4th rights suppression :)
Yes, but you also referred to murder for hire charges as influencing the judge; why do you think it's specifically Force's testimony that influenced her, as opposed to all the other evidence?
>As i already explained (and you can google it yourself), that charge was used by prosecution to argue to suppress (and the suppression was granted) the 4th Amendment defense's motion.
Can you excerpt the part of that document 9in a more searchable form here https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/silkr...) that says that? I've read through much of it, and the charge isn't mentioned as part of any 4th Amendment claims; it's hard to see how that would even make sense legally.
>Judge denied bail because of that charge. How that can be said irrelevant?
It's irrelevant insofar as any claims that Force isn't reliable; the judge knew whatever was from Force (which you still haven't shown, but even if you did), and the judge knew Force was being charged, so they could take it into account.
>As they clearly state in the indictment that it was such an undercover agent, thus they must have heard the testimony by Force, and thus whether this testimony was necessary is really a moot point because they did heard it.
They Maryland Jury may have heard from Force, but that wasn't what his trial was based on. To support your claim above, you need to show that what he was actually sentenced on was based on Force's testimony/affidavit, and as there was plenty of evidence without Force and nothing obtained by Force was brought up in the trial, your claim seems very week.
>And by the way, the laptop was stolen illegally
Says who? They had a warrant. Did you even read that document you linked?
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/11/Ross-U...
There is nothing about Force's crimes in the document. So the "honest" Force's testimony based Maryland case (read the description of the other 5 murder-for-hire claims if you don't see how the Maryland was the Force's case, and it was the only claim that made it at least to the indictment stage) was used to deny bail in the New York case where Ulbricht was sentenced to life. Or to "protect" witnesses from him - https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nysd/422824/107-0.... If you fail to see connection here ... Anyway, i rest my case :)
Edit: in response to your response below - denied bail, denied timely access to witnesses, denied other stuff with that "murder-for-hire" going though a lot of the trial's documents - it is obviously that Judge "gave notice" to that charge and thus the trial was obviously "poisoned". As i already mentioned above, allowing for the after-the-fact calculation of exact gaps and other effects by the "poison" would be a loophole around the "no-poisoning" principle. The trial was materially poisoned, and thus the sentence poisoned too.
And that doesn't prove your claim that he was sentenced to life based on Force's testimony, only denied bail. There's quite a large gap between those two claims.