9 ms·

Free Ross Ulbricht

178 points by linksbro 4y ago

dutchbrit 4y ago
Didn't Ross hire a hitman?
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  >Ross was smeared with false, unprosecuted allegations of planning murder-for-hire that much of the media amplified through inaccurate and sensationalized reporting. The allegations were never charged at trial, never proven, never submitted to, or ruled on by, a jury, and eventually dismissed with prejudice.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Well, that sounds dispassionate and unbiased. And oh hey, he's a model prisoner ...none of this is utilizing actual facts, it's just assertions and emotive wording.
    - superchroma 4y ago
      "First-time offender, All non-violent charges, Two life sentences + 40 years without parole" Seems pretty clear cut. I would like to take this moment to remind you that Ghislane Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        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.
        superchroma 4y ago
        Yes I know they are free to do that but that doesn't mean that it's fair.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        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.
        vkou 4y ago
        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.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      The website is called "free Ross Ulbricht," they aren't quiet about their bias. >none of this is utilizing actual facts, "The allegations were never charged at trial, never proven, never submitted to, or ruled on by, a jury, and eventually dismissed with prejudice" are the actual facts.
      - ffggffggj 4y ago
        Being proud of your bias doesn’t absolve you of its fact corruption effect, that is just silly. If anything it makes you more likely to stretch the truth.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
        I didn't say it absolves them of anything, I said that the bias was clear and unhidden.
    - boomskats 4y ago
      It objectively compares his sentence of 2 lifetimes + 40 years to the sentences of the biggest actual drug dealers on silk road, as well as the founders of the bigger silk road 2.0, all of whom got less than 10 years. I would consider that to be satisfactory actual fact utilization.
    - rob74 4y ago
      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.
      - jahewson 4y ago
        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).
        pcthrowaway 4y ago
        At the very least, the 2 agents involved in his case being found to be corrupt and having forged evidence, should cast additional doubt on the murder for hire. I'm not saying he didn't do it, but had that been known at the time, I think it would have been less decided that his sentencing should take the alleged murders for hire into account. He should be tried for that separately at this point
        jahewson 4y ago
        It went to appeal and all those points were addressed. But I agree that it would have been much better to actually prosecute those murder-for-hire charges. Even if acquitted, the judge can still take the accusations into account during sentencing (due to the different evidentiary standards).
        from 4y ago
        > 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.
- boomskats 4y ago
  The article linked here addresses that multiple times. That accusation, largely overinflated by the media, was dismissed with prejudice. He was never even charged with it.
  - avalys 4y ago
    What does "largely overinflated" mean, and how does it differ from "completely fabricated"?
    - DoItToMe81 4y ago
      The FBI accepted that multiple people were behind the DreadPirateRoberts account and that the writing style did not match his. He was ultimately not charged with it, but the story was used to slander him and make him seem dangerous and violent.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - etchalon 4y ago
        That is not what happened.
  - etchalon 4y ago
    The article conflates the case in Maryland, which was dismissed after Ulbricht was already convicted and his appeals denied by SCOTUS. The article pretends this exonerated Ross when it reality the government didn't see a reason to go through another trial when he was already serving multiple life sentences. The article also does the hand-waivey "it was never shown the messages were authored by Ross." Those messages were presented into evidence, during the trial. Ross lawyers had no explanation for them.
- heromal 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Hey, can you please not break the site guidelines like this? We have to ban such accounts and I don't want to ban you. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Synaesthesia 4y ago
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.
- ddalex 4y ago
  Didn't this guy try to hire a hitman ?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - blackshaw 4y ago
    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]
    - jjallen 4y ago
      "no contracted killing actually occurred" Isn't it illegal to hire people to kill people even if they aren't actually killed? Like when the police go undercover they don't wait for someone to be killed, they wait for definitive evidence that the hiring person seriously plans to follow through with it I thought.
DoItToMe81 4y ago
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.
- ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
  > I think people who facilitate the sale of community destroying hard drugs deserve punishment 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.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    You conveniently redefined what most anyone would consider not a hard drug as a hard drug to make your point.
    - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
      Does it really matter what "most" think? From the medical point of view, ethanol is a hard drug. It was actually defined as one in an old USSR government standard, but that definition was dropped later (in the 1970s or thereabouts IIRC).
      - hnlmorg 4y ago
        Yourself and others are missing the point. US law here isn’t “what was considered a hard drug in pre-1970s USSR”. And regardless of what the medical point of view might be, alcohol isn’t classed as a hard drug in US law. Frankly though, even this straw man argument is moot because it is illegal to sell alcohol without a license too. So regardless of what substance was on sale, this market place was facilitating illegal transactions. As for whether 40 years is a bit harsh, that’s a lot more subjective. But it doesn’t further the conversation to shift definitions of substances when they’re already legally defined.
blobbers 4y ago
How about the rest of the sentence is given to SBF.
whatitmatteryo 4y ago
Yes! Free Ross! Think about all the little children who won't be turned into porn stars without his marketplace! It's not fair to them!
- blackoil 4y ago
  Don't worry about the kids, they have Youtube/Instagram and Tiktok, lot's of places for twerking semi-nude.
  - whatitmatteryo 4y ago
    But it's not the same. Who wants to be exploited like an influencer when you can be the star of a creepy old man's sex videographer fantasies, before he kills you and hides your body. That's the kind o freedom that heroes like Ross are protecting!
- maskenfreiheit2 4y ago
  [dead]
AndyMcConachie 4y ago
You could say all the same things for any other victims of America's drug war. IMO the drug war should end and all non-violent drug offenders should be released. But the American economy depends on prison slavery, and they need the drug war to continue creating slaves. https://unicor.gov/ https://unicor.gov/
duped 4y ago
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.
scoofy 4y ago
You can’t give a gigantic middle finger to the social contract and expect to be treated with kid gloves. I think the sentence was excessive, but then again I didn’t run a website for years for the expressed purpose of facilitating and profiting from the illegal international drug trade. The idea that he would just be released and not then immediately charged by another nation is naive. I’m genuinely shocked that this is getting attention from anyone but libertarian ideologues. Edit: I’m fine with your downvotes. Nobody wants to discuss the level of taboo breaking the Silk Road caused simply because it’s actually not entirely difficult to operate. People get made examples of.
root_axis 4y ago
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. From https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html
- weare138 4y ago
  This. While I do think his sentence was excessive that man was in no way innocent.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    Whats validating about that? 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
    - root_axis 4y ago
      > 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 The judge addressed this: > The record was more than sufficient to support the district court's reliance on those attempted murders in sentencing Ulbricht to life in prison. The attempted murders for hire separate this case from that of an ordinary drug dealer, regardless of the quantity of drugs involved in the offense, and lend further support to the district court's finding that Ulbricht's conduct and character were exceptionally destructive. That he was able to distance himself from the actual violence he paid for by using a computer to order the killings is not mitigating. Indeed, the cruelty that he displayed in his casual and confident negotiations for the hits is unnerving. We thus cannot say that a life sentence was outside the “range of permissible decisions” under the circumstances. Cavera, 550 F.3d at 189.
roenxi 4y ago
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. [0] https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20170531115 https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20170531115
Jasper_ 4y ago
This is the guy who thought about whether to sell cyanide to people or not, and decided that, yes, Silk Road should sell it ("myself" is Ross): > 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-fbi-reveals-whats-on-ross-ulbrichts-computer-in-open-court/ 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.
jjallen 4y ago
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]
- tchalla 4y ago
  I wish we though about almost everything probabilistically instead of raging over false binaries.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  > 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?)
  - scoofy 4y ago
    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.
    - from 4y ago
      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.
- 4y ago
etchalon 4y ago
This will never happen. I don't know why people pretend it might, or why this site shows up on HN every few months as if it's new information.
digianarchist 4y ago
There's a lot of strange and misleading information on the website. For example the sentencing disparity is comparing sentences that were handed out in locations outside of the United States [0]. [0] - https://apnews.com/article/16c1186f8839c814b84a614542c8486e https://apnews.com/article/16c1186f8839c814b84a614542c8486e
whywhatwhere 4y ago
He attempted to kill multiple people, and was completely indifferent to the harms caused by his marketplace. Indeed he profited massively from them. 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.
big_red 4y ago
“All nonviolent charges” He hired hitmen over the dark web how is that not violence?
- COGlory 4y ago
  He wasn't charged with that.
  - big_red 4y ago
    well then lets all band together and get that murdering gangster kingpin back in our communities where he belongs. I mean he’s a psychopath, obviously.
- microtherion 4y ago
  Presumably the hitmen were asked to kill with kindness.
from 4y ago
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.

Free Ross Ulbricht

178 points by linksbro 4y ago

dutchbrit 4y ago

Didn't Ross hire a hitman?

boomboomsubban 4y ago
>Ross was smeared with false, unprosecuted allegations of planning murder-for-hire that much of the media amplified through inaccurate and sensationalized reporting. The allegations were never charged at trial, never proven, never submitted to, or ruled on by, a jury, and eventually dismissed with prejudice.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Well, that sounds dispassionate and unbiased. And oh hey, he's a model prisoner ...none of this is utilizing actual facts, it's just assertions and emotive wording.
  - superchroma 4y ago
    "First-time offender, All non-violent charges, Two life sentences + 40 years without parole" Seems pretty clear cut. I would like to take this moment to remind you that Ghislane Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      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.
      - superchroma 4y ago
        Yes I know they are free to do that but that doesn't mean that it's fair.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        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.
        vkou 4y ago
        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.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    The website is called "free Ross Ulbricht," they aren't quiet about their bias. >none of this is utilizing actual facts, "The allegations were never charged at trial, never proven, never submitted to, or ruled on by, a jury, and eventually dismissed with prejudice" are the actual facts.
    - ffggffggj 4y ago
      Being proud of your bias doesn’t absolve you of its fact corruption effect, that is just silly. If anything it makes you more likely to stretch the truth.
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        I didn't say it absolves them of anything, I said that the bias was clear and unhidden.
  - boomskats 4y ago
    It objectively compares his sentence of 2 lifetimes + 40 years to the sentences of the biggest actual drug dealers on silk road, as well as the founders of the bigger silk road 2.0, all of whom got less than 10 years. I would consider that to be satisfactory actual fact utilization.
  - rob74 4y ago
    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.
    - jahewson 4y ago
      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).
      - pcthrowaway 4y ago
        At the very least, the 2 agents involved in his case being found to be corrupt and having forged evidence, should cast additional doubt on the murder for hire. I'm not saying he didn't do it, but had that been known at the time, I think it would have been less decided that his sentencing should take the alleged murders for hire into account. He should be tried for that separately at this point
        jahewson 4y ago
        It went to appeal and all those points were addressed. But I agree that it would have been much better to actually prosecute those murder-for-hire charges. Even if acquitted, the judge can still take the accusations into account during sentencing (due to the different evidentiary standards).
      - from 4y ago
        > 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.
boomskats 4y ago
The article linked here addresses that multiple times. That accusation, largely overinflated by the media, was dismissed with prejudice. He was never even charged with it.
- avalys 4y ago
  What does "largely overinflated" mean, and how does it differ from "completely fabricated"?
  - DoItToMe81 4y ago
    The FBI accepted that multiple people were behind the DreadPirateRoberts account and that the writing style did not match his. He was ultimately not charged with it, but the story was used to slander him and make him seem dangerous and violent.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - etchalon 4y ago
      That is not what happened.
- etchalon 4y ago
  The article conflates the case in Maryland, which was dismissed after Ulbricht was already convicted and his appeals denied by SCOTUS. The article pretends this exonerated Ross when it reality the government didn't see a reason to go through another trial when he was already serving multiple life sentences. The article also does the hand-waivey "it was never shown the messages were authored by Ross." Those messages were presented into evidence, during the trial. Ross lawyers had no explanation for them.
heromal 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Hey, can you please not break the site guidelines like this? We have to ban such accounts and I don't want to ban you. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Synaesthesia 4y ago

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.

ddalex 4y ago
Didn't this guy try to hire a hitman ?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blackshaw 4y ago
  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]
  - jjallen 4y ago
    "no contracted killing actually occurred" Isn't it illegal to hire people to kill people even if they aren't actually killed? Like when the police go undercover they don't wait for someone to be killed, they wait for definitive evidence that the hiring person seriously plans to follow through with it I thought.

DoItToMe81 4y ago

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.

ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
> I think people who facilitate the sale of community destroying hard drugs deserve punishment 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.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  You conveniently redefined what most anyone would consider not a hard drug as a hard drug to make your point.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
    Does it really matter what "most" think? From the medical point of view, ethanol is a hard drug. It was actually defined as one in an old USSR government standard, but that definition was dropped later (in the 1970s or thereabouts IIRC).
    - hnlmorg 4y ago
      Yourself and others are missing the point. US law here isn’t “what was considered a hard drug in pre-1970s USSR”. And regardless of what the medical point of view might be, alcohol isn’t classed as a hard drug in US law. Frankly though, even this straw man argument is moot because it is illegal to sell alcohol without a license too. So regardless of what substance was on sale, this market place was facilitating illegal transactions. As for whether 40 years is a bit harsh, that’s a lot more subjective. But it doesn’t further the conversation to shift definitions of substances when they’re already legally defined.

blobbers 4y ago

How about the rest of the sentence is given to SBF.

whatitmatteryo 4y ago

Yes! Free Ross! Think about all the little children who won't be turned into porn stars without his marketplace! It's not fair to them!

blackoil 4y ago
Don't worry about the kids, they have Youtube/Instagram and Tiktok, lot's of places for twerking semi-nude.
- whatitmatteryo 4y ago
  But it's not the same. Who wants to be exploited like an influencer when you can be the star of a creepy old man's sex videographer fantasies, before he kills you and hides your body. That's the kind o freedom that heroes like Ross are protecting!
maskenfreiheit2 4y ago
[dead]

AndyMcConachie 4y ago

You could say all the same things for any other victims of America's drug war. IMO the drug war should end and all non-violent drug offenders should be released. But the American economy depends on prison slavery, and they need the drug war to continue creating slaves. https://unicor.gov/ https://unicor.gov/

duped 4y ago

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.

scoofy 4y ago

You can’t give a gigantic middle finger to the social contract and expect to be treated with kid gloves. I think the sentence was excessive, but then again I didn’t run a website for years for the expressed purpose of facilitating and profiting from the illegal international drug trade. The idea that he would just be released and not then immediately charged by another nation is naive. I’m genuinely shocked that this is getting attention from anyone but libertarian ideologues. Edit: I’m fine with your downvotes. Nobody wants to discuss the level of taboo breaking the Silk Road caused simply because it’s actually not entirely difficult to operate. People get made examples of.

root_axis 4y ago

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. From https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html

weare138 4y ago
This. While I do think his sentence was excessive that man was in no way innocent.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Whats validating about that? 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
  - root_axis 4y ago
    > 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 The judge addressed this: > The record was more than sufficient to support the district court's reliance on those attempted murders in sentencing Ulbricht to life in prison. The attempted murders for hire separate this case from that of an ordinary drug dealer, regardless of the quantity of drugs involved in the offense, and lend further support to the district court's finding that Ulbricht's conduct and character were exceptionally destructive. That he was able to distance himself from the actual violence he paid for by using a computer to order the killings is not mitigating. Indeed, the cruelty that he displayed in his casual and confident negotiations for the hits is unnerving. We thus cannot say that a life sentence was outside the “range of permissible decisions” under the circumstances. Cavera, 550 F.3d at 189.

roenxi 4y ago

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. [0] https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20170531115 https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20170531115

Jasper_ 4y ago

This is the guy who thought about whether to sell cyanide to people or not, and decided that, yes, Silk Road should sell it ("myself" is Ross): > 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-fbi-reveals-whats-on-ross-ulbrichts-computer-in-open-court/ 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.

jjallen 4y ago

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]

tchalla 4y ago
I wish we though about almost everything probabilistically instead of raging over false binaries.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
> 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?)
- scoofy 4y ago
  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.
  - from 4y ago
    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.
4y ago

etchalon 4y ago

This will never happen. I don't know why people pretend it might, or why this site shows up on HN every few months as if it's new information.

digianarchist 4y ago

There's a lot of strange and misleading information on the website. For example the sentencing disparity is comparing sentences that were handed out in locations outside of the United States [0]. [0] - https://apnews.com/article/16c1186f8839c814b84a614542c8486e https://apnews.com/article/16c1186f8839c814b84a614542c8486e

whywhatwhere 4y ago

He attempted to kill multiple people, and was completely indifferent to the harms caused by his marketplace. Indeed he profited massively from them. 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.

big_red 4y ago

“All nonviolent charges” He hired hitmen over the dark web how is that not violence?

COGlory 4y ago
He wasn't charged with that.
- big_red 4y ago
  well then lets all band together and get that murdering gangster kingpin back in our communities where he belongs. I mean he’s a psychopath, obviously.
microtherion 4y ago
Presumably the hitmen were asked to kill with kindness.

from 4y ago

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.