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Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

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Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#21

Post by FireBeyond »

rsacco wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that and attempting to have multiple people killed.

this infuriates me whenever I see this "justification". Watch Deep Web Documentary ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3312868/ ) . The corrupt FBI agents were the ones responsible for the fake hits, not Ross. I get that you're coming from ignorance and probably not malice, and I remember seeing the Article headlines too when it came out; but bro, it's Oct 2015 and we now know those charges are bullshit.

Oh, come on. From Alex Winter:

"Silk Road Was Just Another Tech Company Outside of the tech press, Winter notes, a lot of the media coverage on the Silk Road has been “drugs and guns and hitmen—just wildly off-base.” Off-base, he says, because when he started interviewing the people who knew Silk Road he didn’t see an outfit that was all that different from those littering Silicon Valley. “I started to meet all these core architects within the Silk Road: vendors, engineers, sellers, administrators, people who were helping with scaling,” he says. “It’s obvious in retrospect but it was just like any large tech company. But it was just not represented that way in the media, so even I was caught off-guard.”"[(http://www.wired.com/2015/05/deep-web-silk-road-alex-winter/...]

That's so disingenuous it's condescending. What the hell were they scaling, exactly? That Silk Road was a scaling experiment, not really a mechanism to sell drugs? Seriously?

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#22

Post by tptacek »

anonbanker wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that and attempting to have multiple people killed.

for the record, this is what ulbricht was convicted of: narcotics trafficking; distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet; narcotics trafficking conspiracy; continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to aid and abet computer hacking; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identity documents; and money laundering conspiracy. notice that "attempting to have multiple people killed" is not something he was convicted…

Notice indictment, first count, overt act B.

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#23

Post by [deleted] »

anonbanker wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that and attempting to have multiple people killed.

for the record, this is what ulbricht was convicted of: narcotics trafficking; distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet; narcotics trafficking conspiracy; continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to aid and abet computer hacking; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identity documents; and money laundering conspiracy. notice that "attempting to have multiple people killed" is not something he was convicted…

[deleted]

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#24

Post by clamprecht »

tptacek wrote: post #16
clamprecht wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they didn't have to prove anything here. It's very common in federal court to plead and be convicted of one thing, and then they bring in all this other shit at sentencing. The burden at trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", but the bar at sentencing is "preponderance of the evidence" I believe. And I don't buy it for a second that the judge thought about this sentence for 100 hours. Federal judges sen…

That's not true. The murder-for-hire scheme wasn't simply "related conduct": it was also a predicate of the conspiracy charge, which had to sustain a "reasonable doubt" standard at trial, and a sentencing accelerator that met a "preponderance of evidence" standard during sentencing. Both are discussed in the transcript. I do appreciate the color from your own experiences. It's certainly not my contention that sentenc…

Ok, then I was misinformed on Ross's case, if he was convicted for the murder conspiracy. I don't know first-hand what happened in his case. I do know first-hand what happened in my case (and in many of cases of friends) where the US Attorney (the prosecutor) misled the court or outright lied, or had a witness lie, to get the defendant a higher sentence. They do it so routinely that it casts doubt on all cases now (for me, at least).

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#25

Post by mikeyouse »

anonbanker wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that and attempting to have multiple people killed.

for the record, this is what ulbricht was convicted of: narcotics trafficking; distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet; narcotics trafficking conspiracy; continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to aid and abet computer hacking; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identity documents; and money laundering conspiracy. notice that "attempting to have multiple people killed" is not something he was convicted…

From the linked documents, straight from the judge as sentencing adjustments:

    Ulbricht's directed violence here is and 
    relates to the murders for hire which he is alleged to 
    have commissioned and paid for. The Court must 
    determine whether these allegations have been
    demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence and I 
    find that there is ample and unambiguous evidence that
    Ulbricht commissioned five murders as part of his 
    efforts to protect his criminal enterprise and that he paid
    for these murders. There is no evidence that he was 
    role-playing.

    The Court finds that the evidence is clear and
    unambiguous and it far exceeds the necessary
    preponderance findings, that Ulbricht believed he was
    paying for murders of those he wanted eliminated, and 
    that he believed they had in fact been murdered.
Check out pages 18 - 19.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/283722300/Ross-Ulbricht-Sentencing

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#26

Post by nness »

stahlkopf wrote: post #10

Interesting how the judge is outraged by the recommendation of 'Doctor X' to the person to discontinue their antidepressants before taking MDMA. Surely she must know the highly elevated risk of mixing anti-depressants and a drug like MDMA can cause Serotonin Syndrome and lead to death....

I think the judges point was that someone responsible would not recommend MDMA in these circumstances, rather than tell the other party to try and juggle their prescription medication and drug usage.

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#27

Post by stevecalifornia »

stahlkopf wrote: post #10

Interesting how the judge is outraged by the recommendation of 'Doctor X' to the person to discontinue their antidepressants before taking MDMA. Surely she must know the highly elevated risk of mixing anti-depressants and a drug like MDMA can cause Serotonin Syndrome and lead to death....

An actual doctor would say: "Dont do MDMA. Don't get off your anti-depressants."

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#28

Post by tptacek »

clamprecht wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. The murder-for-hire scheme wasn't simply "related conduct": it was also a predicate of the conspiracy charge, which had to sustain a "reasonable doubt" standard at trial, and a sentencing accelerator that met a "preponderance of evidence" standard during sentencing. Both are discussed in the transcript. I do appreciate the color from your own experiences. It's certainly not my contention that sentenc…

Ok, then I was misinformed on Ross's case, if he was convicted for the murder conspiracy. I don't know first-hand what happened in his case. I do know first-hand what happened in my case (and in many of cases of friends) where the US Attorney (the prosecutor) misled the court or outright lied, or had a witness lie, to get the defendant a higher sentence. They do it so routinely that it casts doubt on all cases now (f…

I can't possibly blame you. You were also sentenced during a period of hysteria about computer crime. It must have sucked a lot.

I might be biased, since ToneLoc is what got me started programming.

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#29

Post by clamprecht »

tptacek wrote: post #22
anonbanker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for the record, this is what ulbricht was convicted of: narcotics trafficking; distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet; narcotics trafficking conspiracy; continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to aid and abet computer hacking; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identity documents; and money laundering conspiracy. notice that "attempting to have multiple people killed" is not something he was convicted…

Notice indictment, first count, overt act B.

For the benefit of others, here is the indictment: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...

The murder for hire thing is on page 5.

Re: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence

#30

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #19
clamprecht wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sentence would be sufficient, if 10 years isn't?

Simply for running a drug market, with no additional criminal conduct? Just the nuts-and-bolts of running the site, setting up Tor, taking money, that kind of stuff? 1-2 years seems about right. You think about the very low barrier to starting a site like that up, and then you think about the kind of person likely to stumble into that scheme, and then what it would take to deter them and others from trying it, and it…

[deleted]
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