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> I've never read an exculpatory explanation of Ulbricht's payment to arrange murders that made any sense at all. This. The mental gymnastics involved in peopl

> I've never read an exculpatory explanation of Ulbricht's payment to arrange murders that made any sense at all. This. The mental gymnastics involved in people pivoting from "the justice system is awful, especially the way they've treated poor little Ulbricht" to "the only possible standard for judging Ulbricht's character and intentions is the decisions the justice system made or didn't make" is Olympian.

tptacek 4y ago
I'm just saying, they got black-and-white evidence that Ulbricht arranged to pay for a murder, and the Internet has weird stories about how the payment and later murder "confirmation" were some kind of communicative act between Ulbricht and other associates that didn't have anything to do with arranging an actual murder, and it all makes just literally no sense at all. I'm not making a normative claim about the fairness of the US justice system, I'm just saying that if you're trying to pay off a witness, the absolute last way you'd ever structure that payment is as a phony murder for hire scheme.
- notahacker 4y ago
  I agree. My beef's entirely with the people simultaneously claiming we can't agree with the justice system's verdict, but also that we absolutely can't form our own negative judgements of Ulbricht's actions because apparently the only relevant standard for whether orders like “can you change the order to execute rather than torture” made Ulbricht a terribly unsympathetic character is a claim it wasn't the basis of the judicial verdict...
  - meowface 4y ago
    It's not about sympathy but justice. I disagree with tptacek's characterization of it as not being legal finagling. Burying murder-for-hire attempts under "narcotics trafficking conspiracy" is obtuse and opaque. He should be explicitly charged. And yes, perhaps this means the fault isn't with the prosecutors or judge but with the scope of the narcotics trafficking conspiracy laws themselves; it's still sketchy. I'm not sympathetic to him in the slightest. I believe he's almost certainly guilty of attempting to have those people murdered. I think his sentence should be overturned and I think he should be explicitly charged with attempted murder, and hopefully he will be convicted of those crimes and re-sentenced to life in prison. (Whether or not that's legally viable, I have no idea; I just think it's what ought to happen.)

tptacek 4y ago

I'm just saying, they got black-and-white evidence that Ulbricht arranged to pay for a murder, and the Internet has weird stories about how the payment and later murder "confirmation" were some kind of communicative act between Ulbricht and other associates that didn't have anything to do with arranging an actual murder, and it all makes just literally no sense at all. I'm not making a normative claim about the fairness of the US justice system, I'm just saying that if you're trying to pay off a witness, the absolute last way you'd ever structure that payment is as a phony murder for hire scheme.

notahacker 4y ago
I agree. My beef's entirely with the people simultaneously claiming we can't agree with the justice system's verdict, but also that we absolutely can't form our own negative judgements of Ulbricht's actions because apparently the only relevant standard for whether orders like “can you change the order to execute rather than torture” made Ulbricht a terribly unsympathetic character is a claim it wasn't the basis of the judicial verdict...
- meowface 4y ago
  It's not about sympathy but justice. I disagree with tptacek's characterization of it as not being legal finagling. Burying murder-for-hire attempts under "narcotics trafficking conspiracy" is obtuse and opaque. He should be explicitly charged. And yes, perhaps this means the fault isn't with the prosecutors or judge but with the scope of the narcotics trafficking conspiracy laws themselves; it's still sketchy. I'm not sympathetic to him in the slightest. I believe he's almost certainly guilty of attempting to have those people murdered. I think his sentence should be overturned and I think he should be explicitly charged with attempted murder, and hopefully he will be convicted of those crimes and re-sentenced to life in prison. (Whether or not that's legally viable, I have no idea; I just think it's what ought to happen.)