111–120 of 121 posts
Several posts on this thread (as well as TFA) have suggested the hitman for hire was slander to paint Ulbricht in a bad light. This is not true. > At the sentencing hearing, the district court resolved several disputed issues of fact. For example, because Ulbricht contested his responsibility for the five commissioned murders for hire, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did in f…
This. While I do think his sentence was excessive that man was in no way innocent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it really matter what "most" think? From the medical point of view, ethanol is a hard drug. It was actually defined as one in an old USSR government standard, but that definition was dropped later (in the 1970s or thereabouts IIRC).
Yourself and others are missing the point. US law here isn’t “what was considered a hard drug in pre-1970s USSR”. And regardless of what the medical point of view might be, alcohol isn’t classed as a hard drug in US law. Frankly though, even this straw man argument is moot because it is illegal to sell alcohol without a license too. So regardless of what substance was on sale, this market place was facilitating illeg…
The definition of a hard drug has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not. Alcohol is a hard drug by the definition of addictiveness and propensity for harm. When it was made illegal, it didn't reduce use and only increased harms. We learned our lesson and made that hard drug legal in order mitigate the harms of organized crime benefiting from selling it.
Similarly all other illegal drugs should be made legal to reduce the harms of them being illegal and facilitating organized crime that increases violence in communities.
In that regard, the silk road was actually a net good. It reduced gang violence by preventing gangs from competing for physical territory. The US postal service delivering the darknet drugs prevented the gangs from being able to enshrine their Monopoly through violence. This was unequivocally good. Similarly reviews by customers increased quality and purity and reduced tainted drugs, reducing harm to the users. Thus, the silk road was a net social good when measured from a social welfare costs and benefits.
Several posts on this thread (as well as TFA) have suggested the hitman for hire was slander to paint Ulbricht in a bad light. This is not true. > At the sentencing hearing, the district court resolved several disputed issues of fact. For example, because Ulbricht contested his responsibility for the five commissioned murders for hire, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did in f…
This. While I do think his sentence was excessive that man was in no way innocent.
If the prosecutors thought they had a good case, why wouldn't they pursue this?
You can't have it both ways, is court the authority on guilt or not? If not, how can you trust his guilty verdict for the other crimes?
Several posts on this thread (as well as TFA) have suggested the hitman for hire was slander to paint Ulbricht in a bad light. This is not true. > At the sentencing hearing, the district court resolved several disputed issues of fact. For example, because Ulbricht contested his responsibility for the five commissioned murders for hire, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did in f…
It is not a contradiction to say he could've been guilty by preponderance of evidence and innocent because of reasonable doubt.
You either trust the high standards of criminal culpability, or you don't -- in which case why do you believe his other guilty verdict can be trusted?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alcohol is at the top of the list of objective harm to self and others, right up there with heroin. What "most anyone would consider" is irrelevant to the actual pharmacology of the durg.
citation needed
[1] https://www.anrows.org.au/publication/links-between-alcohol-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's certainly viewed as immoral at the very least in the UK. "In R v Looseley; Attorney General's Reference (No 3 of 2000) [2002] 1 Cr. App. R. 29, the House of Lords held that although entrapment is not a substantive defence in English law, where an accused can show entrapment, the court may stay the proceedings as an abuse of the court's process or it may exclude evidence pursuant to Section 78 PACE 1984 ... "Poli…
Entrapment is when you motivate someone to commit a crime that they would not have otherwise committed. In this case, this guy went looking for a contract killer and the police answered his request.
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It should be noted that the killing was conspiraed by FBI Agents where some of them also stealed a bunch of bitcoin for their own interest. It's nowhere mentioned cause it would put the Feds in a bad light
Are you suggesting that FBI actually forced him to contract a hitman? My understanding is that FBI set up the bait and this guy eat it hook and all. It is not illegal or even immoral to bait somebody, there was no pressure, FBI presented the opportunity and this guy wanted to have somebody killed.
This is a good lesson about not forgetting that much of life is not binary. Here we have someone who was convicted of doing illegal things. There is also strong evidence that he hired and paid someone to kill five people. So the question isn't free or don't free him. The question is "how long should he be in jail for?". There's a middle ground here. Many people, including the OP website just say "free" him. I don't k…
But we penalize, not rehabilitate, and some people are beyond rehabilitation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Entrapment is when you motivate someone to commit a crime that they would not have otherwise committed. In this case, this guy went looking for a contract killer and the police answered his request.
He would not have committed the crime if the FBI hadn't set up the fake persona that was allegedly going to get caught and get Ulbright arrested and charged with a life sentence.