4 ms·
If only the judge in Ross Ulbricht's case had as much principle and courage. It's another case where the prosecution focused on talking up sensationalist rumors
by woah 5y ago
If only the judge in Ross Ulbricht's case had as much principle and courage. It's another case where the prosecution focused on talking up sensationalist rumors during the trial, rumors that they had no intention of proving.
- tptacek 5y agoWhich rumors are you referring to? People often say that about the "murder for hire" scheme, in the mistaken belief that Ulbricht wasn't actually charged for that. He was: the murder scheme was an explicit predicate of the conspiracy charge. They did in fact charge him for it. It's right there in the indictment.
- bc4m 5y agoYes, but they left out explicit murder-for-hire charges in the indictment for that trial. They filed a separate indictment with those charges in a different state which they dropped after the first trial ended. It's not exactly the same but I see a pattern of using an accusation to influence a trial without intending to prove it.
- tptacek 5y agoI don't think that's true. I think the murder-for-hire scheme is a predicate on the conspiracy charge he was ultimately convicted for, in the main trial.
- Fezzik 5y agoI think you’re conflating ‘the trial’ with ‘sentencing’ - all the stuff about him trying to hire a hitman was brought up at sentencing (I thought), not during the trial. Under US law almost anything can be brought up as a mitigating or aggravating circumstance at sentencing - whether such facts would be admissible at trial is irrelevant as the rules of evidence do not apply to sentencing. Edit: added the “I thought” - my recollection was the charges related to the hitman-hiring were dropped. I may be misremembering.