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 fact commission the murders, believing that they would be carried out. The district court characterized the evidence of the murders for hire, which included Ulbricht's journal, chats with other Silk Road users, and the evidence showing that Ulbricht actually paid a total of $650,000 in Bitcoins for the killings, as “ample and unambiguous.” App'x 1465.
Agreed - from a purely personal morality argument, I’m convinced this guy did indeed pay for contracted killings for 5 people. Yeah, some of the cops setting up the sting were corrupt, I can certainly see why it was sketchy in court and prosecutors decided to drop this angle (they had him on massive drug dealing anyways), but from my personal moral POV, dude paid for murders. I’m not shedding any tears about Ross being in jail.
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.
I get the "Free Ross" campaigners are trying to persuade us, and I think his parents are largely behind it which I sympathize with, but the manner in which they gloss over FIVE ATTEMPTED MURDERS goes beyond mere bias.
I don't get this. The prosecutors decided not to press the hitman charges, so would the defense have even tried to gather evidence that it was false? Wouldn't that automatically make the preponderance of the evidence suggest his guilt, as only the evidence suggesting his guilt would have been presented?
"Preponderance of evidence" here refers to a legal standard (i.e. was it more likely than not) rather than the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" and not "most of the evidence."
The prosecutors didn't charge him with hiring hitmen because they were uncertain that they could prove it beyond a resonable doubt, but the evidence they were able to present suggests he probably did it.
Courts determine guilt, and the courts did not find Ross guilty of attempted murder beyond reasonable doubt. So, objectively, Ross is innocent of attempted murder.
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?
Regardless of if it is or is not excessive, I think it is fascinating that the things a man did entirely online while he assumed he was anonymous are enough that society deems two life sentences in prison. He did that much damage to society with a keyboard and mouse.
I don't think sentencing should be using information that wasn’t part of the charges or the conviction. I’ve seen prosecutors chose to be extremely strict about that, judges chose to be extremely about that, jurors say “we couldn't convict because we had to follow the prosecutor’s instructions”, and yet here the jury was swayed by actions unrelated to the charges in order to convict, and the judge applied sentencing standards based on those same actions, and the government completely dropped the other case that would have been based on those actions
If they want to add time, they could totally charge him while he was already in prison! Nobody is worried about “taxpayer resources” the government got way more money out of the seizures than nearly any of their criminal cases, in which they do redundant tacked on convictions all the time!
All discord in his empire was fabricated by corrupt government agents who both served time for this, information that was kept from Ross and his defense and the jury during trial
The corrupt agents staged hits in a makeshift studio, just to extort money from Ross, use the money for personal gain such as landing a movie deal with Fox
Cases have been completely dropped for less
The prosecutor and judge found a strategy that is resilient, that doesn't make it correct
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 know. That is a binary option which implies total innocence. And I don't think total innocence is the case here.
So the question really needs to be: for how many years should this guy be in prison for. And the answer to me, primarily because he was planning on killing five people is quite a long time. Certainly longer than the ten years or so he's been in there.
[edited for some increased readability and formatting]
> 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?)
It was totally a political trial with many exaggerations and the government trying to "set an example".
- First-time offender
- All non-violent charges
- Two life sentences plus 40 years without parole
>Ross Ulbricht is condemned to die in prison for creating an anonymous e-commerce website called Silk Road. An entrepreneur passionate about free markets and privacy, he was 26 when he made the site. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.
>Users of Silk Road chose to exchange a variety of goods, both legal and illegal, including drugs (most commonly small amounts of cannabis). Prohibited was anything involuntary that could harm a third party.
>Ross was not convicted of selling drugs or illegal items himself, but was held responsible for what others sold on the site.
According to Wikipedia, Ulbricht allegedly tried to hire a hitman to murder at least five people, but this wasn't actually something he was formally charged with at trial.
> Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people,[27] allegedly because they threatened to reveal Ulbricht's Silk Road enterprise.[36] Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred.[27] Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with any murder for hire,[27][37] but evidence was introduced at trial supporting the allegations.[27][38] The evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life, and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to affirm the life sentence.[38]
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 personal opinion is that we should rid ourselves of the demand for dark web markets by regulating drugs. The regulations should focus on harm reduction, both for the users and society as a whole.
I think it's disingenuous to say the Silk Road was used for anything but selling black market goods, predominantly drugs.
It's fine to say that someone shouldn't go to prison for life for running a business centered on selling drugs without violence (hitman non withstanding), and I think you could even argue that the drugs got more dangerous for kids once it went down (there was a decent time period when kids didn't have to worry if what they bought as cocaine, MDMA, or aderall was just meth). But trying to claim the Silk Road wasn't Amazon for drugs is just dishonest.
I was initially unhappy about the situation, but on reviewing the opinion [0] of the judge of the appeal it seems reasonable. It is uncomfortable that the judge effectively sentenced him for something he wasn't charged with, but if that judge saw evidence that he tried to plan the murder of multiple people there aren't really many alternatives.
It does seem like bad form that the prosecutors didn't charge him with murder, it leaves open the question of whether the evidence was actually flimsy and Ulbricht's team didn't challenge it properly because they didn't think it was especially relevant. I assume the details of the opinion would reveal the thinking on that if I read it closely.
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.
Hoping it's not too much of an imposition, I'd like to pose a series of rhetorical questions about criminological policy, which may not be new territory, but I hope will, nonetheless, elevate the discussion
What does 'deserve' mean?
How do you distinguish it from vengeance?
If the idea is that it has deterrent value, how do we measure that?
Also why are we trying to deter? What's the social cost of the behavior his platform helped facilitate?
How much did his being a party to that behavior contribute to its prevalence? Is there any evidence suggesting the behavior wouldn't have been enacted through alternative intermediaries?
Most importantly: Is there any unintended secondary cost to society, as a result of bringing punitive repercussions on intermediaries that are incidentally party to an undesired behavior?
In Policy Analysis one often sees a pattern where punitive policies exacerbate either the undesired behavior or associated antisocial behaviors
It's counter-intuitive but the correlation between criminalization and increased antisocial activity — and indeed net social cost — is quite strong.
In my view the only sensible approach to criminology is "consequentialism" with all punishments being informed by therapeutic approaches to reduce future harm — or "Harm Reduction"
When we allow ourselves to be guided by "scale balancing" rationales, it's just too easy for that to turn into sadism and worse "mob" sadism — where any view of proportionality (vague and aspirational to begin with) is abandoned until some "Lord of the Flies" moment of cruelty provokes social reflection.
Nope it's the institutions that trample on people and violate their civil rights that should be suffering punishment. The government, medical, and mental health community are highly discriminatory and don't respect freedom of religion.
It's created a perfect storm of death in destruction in the USA. The system needs to be reboot and built to protect citizens, not abusive / incompetent doctors, insurance companies.
Drug addicts are people that deserve to be respected, not spit on and turned away. Even if you aren't a drug addict, you can really quickly have your rights stripped away. Drug use, even repeated, isn't always addiction. Drugs are often a critical component of our health.
I've become increasingly aware of the role the medical industry is playing in exacerbating drug abuse and suicide. So many people are driven away from care and into a suicide/jail or other health problems like morbid obesity.
> I think people who facilitate the sale of community destroying hard drugs deserve punishment
I'd argue Instagram has done more damage to human relationships and communities than MDMA, despite the former being around for much longer.
Really, when we look at the forces "destroying our communities", it's not so much the drugs as the the reasons people take them - alienation caused by post-modern industrial capitalism, face-to-face interaction replaced by screen time, a society that values "success" over happiness, health and connection... the drugs are a symptom.
If you take morphine because you have a broken bone, the issue is the broken bone.
If people drink themselves to death because they are lonely, the issue is the loneliness.
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?
Readit News
> 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 fact commission the murders, believing that they would be carried out. The district court characterized the evidence of the murders for hire, which included Ulbricht's journal, chats with other Silk Road users, and the evidence showing that Ulbricht actually paid a total of $650,000 in Bitcoins for the killings, as “ample and unambiguous.” App'x 1465.
From https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html
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.
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.
Keep Ross In
The prosecutors didn't charge him with hiring hitmen because they were uncertain that they could prove it beyond a resonable doubt, but the evidence they were able to present suggests he probably did it.
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?
I don't think sentencing should be using information that wasn’t part of the charges or the conviction. I’ve seen prosecutors chose to be extremely strict about that, judges chose to be extremely about that, jurors say “we couldn't convict because we had to follow the prosecutor’s instructions”, and yet here the jury was swayed by actions unrelated to the charges in order to convict, and the judge applied sentencing standards based on those same actions, and the government completely dropped the other case that would have been based on those actions
If they want to add time, they could totally charge him while he was already in prison! Nobody is worried about “taxpayer resources” the government got way more money out of the seizures than nearly any of their criminal cases, in which they do redundant tacked on convictions all the time!
this is such an aberration
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?
The corrupt agents staged hits in a makeshift studio, just to extort money from Ross, use the money for personal gain such as landing a movie deal with Fox
Cases have been completely dropped for less
The prosecutor and judge found a strategy that is resilient, that doesn't make it correct
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 know. That is a binary option which implies total innocence. And I don't think total innocence is the case here.
So the question really needs to be: for how many years should this guy be in prison for. And the answer to me, primarily because he was planning on killing five people is quite a long time. Certainly longer than the ten years or so he's been in there.
[edited for some increased readability and formatting]
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?)
The conviction and sentencing limits are of course there for anyone to see.
But we penalize, not rehabilitate, and some people are beyond rehabilitation.
- First-time offender
- All non-violent charges
- Two life sentences plus 40 years without parole
>Ross Ulbricht is condemned to die in prison for creating an anonymous e-commerce website called Silk Road. An entrepreneur passionate about free markets and privacy, he was 26 when he made the site. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.
>Users of Silk Road chose to exchange a variety of goods, both legal and illegal, including drugs (most commonly small amounts of cannabis). Prohibited was anything involuntary that could harm a third party.
>Ross was not convicted of selling drugs or illegal items himself, but was held responsible for what others sold on the site.
> Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people,[27] allegedly because they threatened to reveal Ulbricht's Silk Road enterprise.[36] Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred.[27] Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with any murder for hire,[27][37] but evidence was introduced at trial supporting the allegations.[27][38] The evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life, and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to affirm the life sentence.[38]
Deleted Comment
I'm pretty sure that running an illegal drug marketplace is also illegal.
That wording really goes out of it's way to sound like this might conceivably be legal, or at least not knowingly criminal.
How about Uber? In most cities they were by allowing airport pickups?
How about Amazon? Remember when they aided and abetted customers with sales tax evasion for years?
-HN
Edit: My personal opinion is that we should rid ourselves of the demand for dark web markets by regulating drugs. The regulations should focus on harm reduction, both for the users and society as a whole.
It's fine to say that someone shouldn't go to prison for life for running a business centered on selling drugs without violence (hitman non withstanding), and I think you could even argue that the drugs got more dangerous for kids once it went down (there was a decent time period when kids didn't have to worry if what they bought as cocaine, MDMA, or aderall was just meth). But trying to claim the Silk Road wasn't Amazon for drugs is just dishonest.
It does seem like bad form that the prosecutors didn't charge him with murder, it leaves open the question of whether the evidence was actually flimsy and Ulbricht's team didn't challenge it properly because they didn't think it was especially relevant. I assume the details of the opinion would reveal the thinking on that if I read it closely.
[0] https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20170531115
Alcohol is undeniably a hard drug. It:
1) is extremely physically addictive
2) causes many overdoses and deaths. More than opiates or cocaine.
At the same time, there is tons of compelling evidence that:
A) making alcohol illegal in the 20s/30s didn't decrease consumption at all and simply increased the danger of consuming tainted alcohol.
B) that prohibition fueled the rise of organized crime in the US
C) that countries with decriminalized drugs and harm reduction policies actually have reduced drug consumption, like Portugal.
Thus, your statement seems entirely incorrect. It actually seems that punishing those who sell hard drugs actually makes it worse for everyone.
What does 'deserve' mean?
How do you distinguish it from vengeance?
If the idea is that it has deterrent value, how do we measure that?
Also why are we trying to deter? What's the social cost of the behavior his platform helped facilitate?
How much did his being a party to that behavior contribute to its prevalence? Is there any evidence suggesting the behavior wouldn't have been enacted through alternative intermediaries?
Most importantly: Is there any unintended secondary cost to society, as a result of bringing punitive repercussions on intermediaries that are incidentally party to an undesired behavior?
In Policy Analysis one often sees a pattern where punitive policies exacerbate either the undesired behavior or associated antisocial behaviors
It's counter-intuitive but the correlation between criminalization and increased antisocial activity — and indeed net social cost — is quite strong.
In my view the only sensible approach to criminology is "consequentialism" with all punishments being informed by therapeutic approaches to reduce future harm — or "Harm Reduction"
When we allow ourselves to be guided by "scale balancing" rationales, it's just too easy for that to turn into sadism and worse "mob" sadism — where any view of proportionality (vague and aspirational to begin with) is abandoned until some "Lord of the Flies" moment of cruelty provokes social reflection.
Anyway thanks for considering my perspective.
It's created a perfect storm of death in destruction in the USA. The system needs to be reboot and built to protect citizens, not abusive / incompetent doctors, insurance companies.
Drug addicts are people that deserve to be respected, not spit on and turned away. Even if you aren't a drug addict, you can really quickly have your rights stripped away. Drug use, even repeated, isn't always addiction. Drugs are often a critical component of our health.
I've become increasingly aware of the role the medical industry is playing in exacerbating drug abuse and suicide. So many people are driven away from care and into a suicide/jail or other health problems like morbid obesity.
I'd argue Instagram has done more damage to human relationships and communities than MDMA, despite the former being around for much longer.
Really, when we look at the forces "destroying our communities", it's not so much the drugs as the the reasons people take them - alienation caused by post-modern industrial capitalism, face-to-face interaction replaced by screen time, a society that values "success" over happiness, health and connection... the drugs are a symptom.
If you take morphine because you have a broken bone, the issue is the broken bone.
If people drink themselves to death because they are lonely, the issue is the loneliness.
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?
> myself: cyanide has a bad reputation
> myself: there are plenty of legitimate uses
> inigo: so we're going to allow it?
> myself: its bad for image/PR
> myself: i think we're going to allow it
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/silk-road-trial-...
You can't represent this guy as just selling some drugs, maybe. He knew what he was doing, and documented all of it.
Prison is the right place for Ross Ulbricht.
Just because he committed all his crimes using a computer doesn't mean he should be let off for these crimes.