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two wrongs don't make a right
Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
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Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#342I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end. That said, I do think he absolutely deserved…
Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges. Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing. He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering. Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
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Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#343Well, I think that justice has been served. The feds' prosecution of Ulbricht was the epitome of throwing the book at someone to make an example, when the government's case was pretty flawed, in my opinion. 10 years is enough time to pay the debt of running the silk road. I am glad that Ulbricht has been pardoned and I feel like a small iota of justice has been returned to the world with this action.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading the comments on this thread. Multiple teenagers (one in Australia) died from the drugs distributed on Silk Road. Ross was ok with selling grenades, body parts, etc on there. But everyone is saying he served his time ???
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Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#344Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When I read that the FBI agents had stopped at Bello Coffee while preparing their stakeout, I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there. Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table dire…
The responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years. Frightening...
Or HN just has a lot more international readers now and English isn't their first language.
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#345I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end. That said, I do think he absolutely deserved…
Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges. Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing. He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering. Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
Honestly any time I read the procedural history of this stuff I get nerd sniped by the bizarre details and I lose track of the big picture. I feel like the whole thing could be three competing Dateline NBC style six-part crime specials and I still wouldn't get tired of it.
Ross heard that one of his Silk Roads moderators was arrested, and so he hired someone to kill the mod? The assassin sent a confirmation photo of his mod, asphyxiated and covered in Campbell's Chicken and Stars Soup?? The supposed assassin was actually a corrupt DEA agent who later served federal prison time for crimes so embarrassing that they were never fully disclosed?!?!
There is some kind of thorny moral question I cannot quite wrap my brain around.
Ross did not successfully have anyone killed, but it seems that he must have thought he was successful?
Ross (it is alleged, and chat logs seem to show) ordered someone's death and paid for it and got explicit confirmation that they were dead. [actually several someones.] Did he feel like a murderer at this point? What a fascinating, real life Raskolnikov style figure.
Later, perhaps much later, he gets strong evidence that the murder was fake. Nothing has changed in the outside world after he learns this -- the victim is no more alive before or after he learns this. Does this change his identity? Is he more or less of a murderer than before?
Do the people who kill with modified Xbox controllers from a warehouse in Las Vegas do the same kind of killing that Ross thought he did?
And then there is some kind of moral thought experiment happening at a Silicon Valley Rationalist, Effective Altruism kind of scale that I can't quite wrap my head around. Do people matter as much in person as if they're just blips on a screen you'll never meet? If Ross could have sent 1 BTC to prevent fatal malaria in a dozen young kids, thousands of miles away, but he didn't, should he feel responsible in some way for their death? Is he about equally responsible for them as for the online people he is pretty sure he ordered killed from afar, but never met?
It's just a lot. The whole story is supernaturally intense; it's hard to believe it was real. It will make for great TV.
See, e.g.
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-... for the faux forum moderator killing
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w... for the other faux five killings (another scam on Ross - he thought he was having extortionists killed? he kept getting confirmations?)
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#346This is wonderful. I've never argued that Ross shouldn't have served time but it's always been clear his prosecution and sentencing were excessive and unjust. The prosecutors asked for a 20 year sentence, which seemed disproportionate given the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender and the non-violent charges he was convicted of. But the judge sentenced Ross to TWO life sentences plus 40 years - without the…
> Biden should have already pardoned Ross because that crazy sentence shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Biden did commute the sentence of several other non-violent cases just last week or thereabouts, and Trump has been talking about Ulbricht for quite some time so it's not a complete surprise.
I guess the whole "murder for hire" thing excluded him from the "non-violent" category. But how that got tacked on seems very odd; the judge basically said "we didn't really handle it in the court case and it wasn't a charge, but it was mentioned a few times and it seemed basically true, so I included it in the sentencing". Like, ehh, okay?
To be honest, I don't really understand much of the logic ("logic") of the US justice system....
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
wasn't there evidence of hiring a hitman to commit a murder in furtherance of the Silk Road? that's not part of "the debt of running the silk road"
The hitman was a conman for a murder on a fictitious person. While he fully believed he was committing a real assassination, you can't convict people for killing imaginary people.
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Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#348This is wonderful. I've never argued that Ross shouldn't have served time but it's always been clear his prosecution and sentencing were excessive and unjust. The prosecutors asked for a 20 year sentence, which seemed disproportionate given the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender and the non-violent charges he was convicted of. But the judge sentenced Ross to TWO life sentences plus 40 years - without the…
Madoff got 150 years for non-violent charges (and he didn't even try to have anyone killed). Died in prison.
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#349I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end. That said, I do think he absolutely deserved…
I'm more interested in the subtext of the pardon. Why this person specifically? And why at this time? Perhaps the discussion shouldn't be about the actual subject of the pardon, and perhaps more about the motives of the pardoner...
Bitcoin
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#350Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When I read that the FBI agents had stopped at Bello Coffee while preparing their stakeout, I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there. Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table dire…
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