For what charges exactly - did they sentence him for murder or planned murder now? Or just for distributing narcotics? It seems rather weird.
You can find the list in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627092
Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
61–70 of 641 posts
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to understand that the "murder for hire" evidence was introduced as part of the trial (at which point Ross' lawyer could have disputed it, but didn't) so it could be used as part of the sentencing decision... and that kind of takes the luster off of the "non-violent crime" argument.
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 It was in the original press release, then it was withdrawn.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.
This is simply not true. Not only was the evidence introduced at trial, but it was tied to a specific charge, and considered at length by the court.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#63Gross miscarriage of justice. People have a right to buy drugs. 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…
He hired a hitman. He's a sociopath, and a suitable candidate for life in prison.
What makes him a sociopath?
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#64I think that this is completely disproportionate. He is being treated as if he was a serial killer or a mob-boss. Hell, even Al Capone was only sentenced to 11 years in Prison.
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People have a right to buy drugs. Actually they don't, which is kind of the point.
We're discussing rights given to us by the Laws of Nature, as understood by our founding fathers, not the meager rights dolled out by the federal government.
What laws of nature? The laws of nature that say if I'm bigger and stronger than you I can beat you up and take all of your stuff?
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#66That seems way too harsh to me. I have strong opinions on the US War on Drugs and it's failure to meaningful deal with drug use/abuse in the USA. And I feel even worse about how it's spilling out into the rest of the world as we go "global" with everything. 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 cr…
I don't believe the death penalty was ever a possibility, following Kennedy v. Louisiana ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_v._Louisiana , "the power of the state to impose the death penalty against an individual for committing a crime that did not result in the death of the victim is now limited to crimes against the state (e.g. espionage, treason).")
The full quote was:
"Our concern here is limited to crimes against individual persons. We do not address, for example, crimes defining and punishing treason, espionage, terrorism, and drug kingpin activity, which are offenses against the State."
(emphasis added)
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, he wasn't. He was never even charged with that; the story of one attempt to hire a hitman was admitted into the trial as evidence that he was running the Silk Road and knew what he was doing, but that was never one of the actual charges against him.
The prosecution sentencing memo rebuts this argument, pointing out that Ulbricht's attempts to procure murder for hire were explicit factual components of one of the charges he faced. 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...
That court opinion describes a list of alleged chats that the Feds planned to introduce as evidence. It does not say the court accepted that evidence as true in the form of a finding of fact. (Put another way, that document does not say what you says it does, and we all know there are two sides to every story.)
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.
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#68I'd say it's an unfair sentence, given that with bitcoin & a decentralized approach, it is unlikely that future versions of this sort of thing will be stoppable by any centralized government. They stopped & sued Napster. Did it stop file sharing? I think the government misplayed their cards -- again. Better to have partnered with Ulbricht -- and had a part in creating whatever future version of the market would be. Better to get some market share in whatever comes next -- then make some big busts that way.
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People have a right to buy drugs. Actually they don't, which is kind of the point.
Yes, they do, you just don't understand rights. 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.
And of course you are perfectly rational and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong...
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison
#70It's interesting. On one hand, if a leader of a traditional drug distribution network landed a life in prison sentence, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. With Silkroad though, I'm actually convinced by the defendants argument: that it provided safer, more trustworthy drugs to users. 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 situati…
Though I agree with you about the "safer drugs" argument, Ross' site was the worst possible thing that could happen to the supporters of safe, anonymous marketplaces- The evidence that he was willing to use brutal mob-style violence to support his business has yet to be disputed by anyone in a credible way.
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