7 ms·

It's terrible that we are doing this to someone who probably would have learned their lesson with only 5-10 years of prison and been able to return to society.

It's terrible that we are doing this to someone who probably would have learned their lesson with only 5-10 years of prison and been able to return to society. He had the potential to return as a productive member of society and now instead he will be a lifelong debt all for assisting in the sale of drugs that people willingly purchased knowing the risk of death from those drugs. He's no saint but this punishment is unreasonable and it seems like the Judge was just out to get him.

randyrand 11y ago
I agree but if they also want to use the strict punishment to deter then it would probably have to be more than that.
- clamprecht 11y ago
  What sentence would be sufficient, if 10 years isn't?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    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 seems like you want enough of a sentence so that it's for real, but nothing more than that. But for paying to have people killed? Life seems appropriate. Maybe, if you want to take a more Scandinavian approach to sentencing, you'd say "10-15 years". Long enough that the convict comes out of prison effectively living a different life than they were before. Enough to completely disrupt their previous connections.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - dreamfactory2 11y ago
      hmm running a drugs market is a criminal conspiracy so I'd imagine a high number for that alone, quite apart from the deaths of users. not sure if his defence team were more inept or desperate from the article
      - tptacek 11y ago
        I understood the question to be "what's a sentence you can defend from first principles". In fact, the deaths of Silk Road drug users played a huge role in his sentence.
    - randyrand 11y ago
      1-2 years? Heck, thats not much risk to start a hugely profitable drug market. I'd take that risk if you could ensure I only get up to 2 years.
- Retra 11y ago
  I don't have an opinion on this particular issue, but I do think it's kind of sad that people think it's ok to punish person A in order to influence the behavior of some other unknown group of people. It seems to me like your punishment should fit the crime under the sole consideration of those actually being punished. Otherwise, you're just making people pay for crimes they didn't commit.
  - randyrand 11y ago
    The threat of jailtime has always been used to deter crime. It's a large part of the reason people don't commit crime all the time. People would have no reason not to commit crime if the stakes were "give back what you stole". "Fitting the crime" includes deterrence up to a sane amount. In general the punishment needs to be more than the crime. Say ~5x. Steal $1,000. Pay $5,000 "worth" of your time in jail.
tptacek 11y ago
Well, that and attempting to have multiple people killed.
- Strom 11y ago
  The assassination stuff is disturbing, but it's not what he was sentenced for.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The sentencing transcript disagrees with you; the judge goes on for several pages about it. There's a really virulent meme that Ulbricht was never tried for the assassination scheme. But he was: the murder-for-hire scheme was a predicate on his "criminal conspiracy" charge. Not only was it brought up in trial, but it was brought up in a way that put the onus on the prosecution to prove it.
    - rsacco 11y ago
      wow, I see now that you "actually" DO have some issue with Ross and want to paint the picture of him as a murderer. There is no point arguing the details with you, you'll never change your stance regardless of facts. I just hope one day you face your karma. To be on the receiving end of your hatred/ignorance.
      - edanm 11y ago
        Err, I'm kind of new to this and don't know anything about this discussion, but... the transcripts linked in the article do talk quite a bit about the assassination attempts. So what exactly are you saying, that it wasn't talked about?
      - anonbanker 11y ago
        whoa. I was on your side until those last two sentences. unvouching.
    - trhway 11y ago
slg 11y ago
I think the judge addressed that issue. >"No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court. It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did." You can argue that our drug laws are wrong or the punishments are too extreme, but singling out Ulbrich for the specifics ways in which he clearly and repeatedly violated those laws is showing favoritism. If his crimes didn't involve the Internet, there would be nothing newsworthy about his arrest and sentencing.
- superkuh 11y ago
  Except he didn't sell drugs at all. He ran a marketplace.
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    Untrue.. The first several pounds of shrooms on the Silk Road were grown and sold by Ulbricht. He claims credit for "Several Kilograms" in his diary.. Several kilos is well into the tens of thousands of dollars range.. http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-the-fbi-found-on-ross-ulbrichts-laptop-2015-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-the-fbi-found-on-r...
    - emmab 11y ago
      I can understand the harm of opiates and stimulants, but are psychedelics really that damaging to society? And if he grew them himself it wasn't contributing to harmful suppliers...
      - breakingcups 11y ago
        I personally know of two people in my social circles who committed suicides on psychedelics. You can definitely argue that such a thing might have happened even without the psychedelics but I'm convinced that being in that altered state of mind pushed these people over the edge (literally in one case). I'm personally pro-legalization of a lot of drugs. I do not want to close myself off to the clear negative effects of said drugs though. I think we should all remain honest and proportionate about them.
omni_wisdumb 11y ago
He would've came out and just tried again. Pretty much every single case of white-collar crime or crimes like this have a repeat offense. Not to mention his site also gave a venue to hire hitmen. Also, the FBI is probably going to end up using him as a asset tbh.
vectorpush 11y ago
I'd consider the sentence excessive were it not for the multiple attempted murder-for-hires. If someone is intellectually and morally capable of directing a criminal enterprise that funds murder as a calculated business decision, and they try to do that, they've earned themselves a life sentence in my view.
- guelo 11y ago
  I don't think the judge agrees with you since that wasn't mentioned in the sentencing. And he wasn't convicted of attempters murder.
  - long 11y ago
    It's true that he wasn't convicted for the murders but the judge did mention it in the sentencing... see page 82: "So, we also have your own violence and there is no doubt -- really none -- that you wanted to and paid for the murders of five people to protect your drug enterprise. That is not the conduct of conviction but it is relevant conduct, so how is that consistent with harm reduction?"

randyrand 11y ago

I agree but if they also want to use the strict punishment to deter then it would probably have to be more than that.

clamprecht 11y ago
What sentence would be sufficient, if 10 years isn't?
- tptacek 11y ago
  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 seems like you want enough of a sentence so that it's for real, but nothing more than that. But for paying to have people killed? Life seems appropriate. Maybe, if you want to take a more Scandinavian approach to sentencing, you'd say "10-15 years". Long enough that the convict comes out of prison effectively living a different life than they were before. Enough to completely disrupt their previous connections.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - dreamfactory2 11y ago
    hmm running a drugs market is a criminal conspiracy so I'd imagine a high number for that alone, quite apart from the deaths of users. not sure if his defence team were more inept or desperate from the article
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I understood the question to be "what's a sentence you can defend from first principles". In fact, the deaths of Silk Road drug users played a huge role in his sentence.
  - randyrand 11y ago
    1-2 years? Heck, thats not much risk to start a hugely profitable drug market. I'd take that risk if you could ensure I only get up to 2 years.
Retra 11y ago
I don't have an opinion on this particular issue, but I do think it's kind of sad that people think it's ok to punish person A in order to influence the behavior of some other unknown group of people. It seems to me like your punishment should fit the crime under the sole consideration of those actually being punished. Otherwise, you're just making people pay for crimes they didn't commit.
- randyrand 11y ago
  The threat of jailtime has always been used to deter crime. It's a large part of the reason people don't commit crime all the time. People would have no reason not to commit crime if the stakes were "give back what you stole". "Fitting the crime" includes deterrence up to a sane amount. In general the punishment needs to be more than the crime. Say ~5x. Steal $1,000. Pay $5,000 "worth" of your time in jail.

tptacek 11y ago

Well, that and attempting to have multiple people killed.

Strom 11y ago
The assassination stuff is disturbing, but it's not what he was sentenced for.
- tptacek 11y ago
  The sentencing transcript disagrees with you; the judge goes on for several pages about it. There's a really virulent meme that Ulbricht was never tried for the assassination scheme. But he was: the murder-for-hire scheme was a predicate on his "criminal conspiracy" charge. Not only was it brought up in trial, but it was brought up in a way that put the onus on the prosecution to prove it.
  - rsacco 11y ago
    wow, I see now that you "actually" DO have some issue with Ross and want to paint the picture of him as a murderer. There is no point arguing the details with you, you'll never change your stance regardless of facts. I just hope one day you face your karma. To be on the receiving end of your hatred/ignorance.
    - edanm 11y ago
      Err, I'm kind of new to this and don't know anything about this discussion, but... the transcripts linked in the article do talk quite a bit about the assassination attempts. So what exactly are you saying, that it wasn't talked about?
    - anonbanker 11y ago
      whoa. I was on your side until those last two sentences. unvouching.
  - trhway 11y ago

slg 11y ago

I think the judge addressed that issue. >"No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court. It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did." You can argue that our drug laws are wrong or the punishments are too extreme, but singling out Ulbrich for the specifics ways in which he clearly and repeatedly violated those laws is showing favoritism. If his crimes didn't involve the Internet, there would be nothing newsworthy about his arrest and sentencing.

superkuh 11y ago
Except he didn't sell drugs at all. He ran a marketplace.
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  Untrue.. The first several pounds of shrooms on the Silk Road were grown and sold by Ulbricht. He claims credit for "Several Kilograms" in his diary.. Several kilos is well into the tens of thousands of dollars range.. http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-the-fbi-found-on-ross-ulbrichts-laptop-2015-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-the-fbi-found-on-r...
  - emmab 11y ago
    I can understand the harm of opiates and stimulants, but are psychedelics really that damaging to society? And if he grew them himself it wasn't contributing to harmful suppliers...
    - breakingcups 11y ago
      I personally know of two people in my social circles who committed suicides on psychedelics. You can definitely argue that such a thing might have happened even without the psychedelics but I'm convinced that being in that altered state of mind pushed these people over the edge (literally in one case). I'm personally pro-legalization of a lot of drugs. I do not want to close myself off to the clear negative effects of said drugs though. I think we should all remain honest and proportionate about them.

omni_wisdumb 11y ago

He would've came out and just tried again. Pretty much every single case of white-collar crime or crimes like this have a repeat offense. Not to mention his site also gave a venue to hire hitmen. Also, the FBI is probably going to end up using him as a asset tbh.

vectorpush 11y ago

I'd consider the sentence excessive were it not for the multiple attempted murder-for-hires. If someone is intellectually and morally capable of directing a criminal enterprise that funds murder as a calculated business decision, and they try to do that, they've earned themselves a life sentence in my view.

guelo 11y ago
I don't think the judge agrees with you since that wasn't mentioned in the sentencing. And he wasn't convicted of attempters murder.
- long 11y ago
  It's true that he wasn't convicted for the murders but the judge did mention it in the sentencing... see page 82: "So, we also have your own violence and there is no doubt -- really none -- that you wanted to and paid for the murders of five people to protect your drug enterprise. That is not the conduct of conviction but it is relevant conduct, so how is that consistent with harm reduction?"