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Free Ross Ulbricht

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Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#91

Post by froh »

DoItToMe81 wrote: post #10

I think people who facilitate the sale of community destroying hard drugs deserve punishment, but this trial was a farce. The media ran ceaseless stories making it sound like he was selling guns to terrorists and child abuse material. There's no way he could have been fairly judged by a jury with how prevalent that type of reporting was.

oh yes, the dual tongues!

to add, how many of the domestic terrorists killing children in schools with guns did buy them legally? vs illegally? and how many homicides were done with legal guns? vs illegal guns? and suicides?

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#92

Post by bboygravity »

scoofy wrote: post #72
Chernobog wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are certainly problematic aspects of dark web markets, society do get some benefits. No physical contact between sellers and buyers, which reduces violence. Reviews of sellers and products makes it significantly easier to purchase safer drugs (for some drugs, adulterants and/or unpredictable potency are a bigger risk than the drug itself). This translates to fewer visits to the ER or morgue. Edit: My pers…

>This translates to fewer visits to the ER or morgue. Yea, you seem confused, the funeral I went to was because my friends brother actually had really easy access to really great heroin. For a long time actually. Surprisingly easy to get delivered… It was only after he was a full-on junkie estranged from his family after they’d basically given up any wealth they had for rehabs and his theft and violence that the “ben…

Getting rid of all dark webs would somehow prevent the symptoms you mention?

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#93

Post by thaumasiotes »

superchroma wrote: post #27
thaumasiotes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US judges are free to sentence a convict for allegations of which he was acquitted. Sentencing him for allegations that were dismissed isn't really different.

Yes I know they are free to do that but that doesn't mean that it's fair.

Well, I'd agree; the fact that that's allowed is an obvious miscarriage of justice.

But it's also how the system is explicitly supposed to work; it doesn't make for a strong "facts-based" argument for clemency.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#94

Post by q1w2 »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #62
root_axis wrote: post #30

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…

He was never charged or convicted of murder, and 2 of the agents on his case were corrupt and dishonest. This is enough to at the very least sow reasonable doubt. I'm all for him being imprisoned if guilty of attempted murder, but he absolutely should not still be in prison for the charges that he was found guilty of.

He was not charged with murder because the attempt was intercepted by the police and did not occur.

The messages he wrote soliciting the contract murder were submitted as evidence as facts in the case against him and weighed heavily in his sentencing.

I don't understand why people want this guy free besides early-crypto-nostalgia.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#95

Post by q1w2 »

jjallen wrote: post #40

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…

For attempting to kill 5 people and for indirectly dealing in some horrible drugs, counterfeit money, and illegal guns... 20 years seems reasonable.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#96

Post by q1w2 »

w14 wrote: post #82
ddalex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#97

Post by from »

scoofy wrote: post #76
pcthrowaway wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the answer to me, primarily because he was planning on killing five people is quite a long time. Would you agree that he shouldn't be in prison for the crimes he was convicted of at least? Because he wasn't tried or convicted of murder-for-hire (yet?)

He isn’t in prison for murder. He is in prison for operating possibly the largest illegal drug market to ever exist. The conviction and sentencing limits are of course there for anyone to see.

Silk Road did like $50-100 million in volume if you measure by bitcoin prices at the time. Tenderloin and a few neighborhoods in San Francisco alone probably have more annual volume than that.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#98

Post by from »

jahewson wrote: post #50
rob74 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact remains that someone should be considered innocent of a crime until proven guilty. If the prosecution couldn't prove that he hired a hitman (sounds like they didn't even try), then that shouldn't influence his sentencing.

That’s not how it works. The evidentiary standard for a jury is “beyond a reasonable doubt” but for the sentencing judge is “preponderance of the evidence”, with the caveat that the judge can’t use that to hand down a sentence harsher than legally permitted by what the jury convicted on (in this case narcotics distribution - resulting in deaths of overdose victims).

> That’s not how it works

No one is arguing about how it works, they're arguing how they think it should work. Otherwise there would be no discussion here at all.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#99

Post by from »

He probably could’ve got 15-20 years if he worked out a deal but he had very ineffective counsel. With RDAP and the First Step Act and potentially compassionate release for COVID he could be out by now.

Re: Free Ross Ulbricht

#100

Post by vkou »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #93
superchroma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I know they are free to do that but that doesn't mean that it's fair.

Well, I'd agree; the fact that that's allowed is an obvious miscarriage of justice. But it's also how the system is explicitly supposed to work; it doesn't make for a strong "facts-based" argument for clemency.

Is it?

There's two angles to justice. The legal, and the moral.

What was done to him was legal, and nobody's denying that.

Given the scope of the crimes he was convicted for, I don't think it was immortal to throw the entire book at him, to the maximum possible legal extent.

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