4 ms·
Look I'm willing to accept on preponderance of the evidence Ross probably did that. But lets examine things criminally. What conviction found he must have bee
by notch898a 4y ago
Look I'm willing to accept on preponderance of the evidence Ross probably did that. But lets examine things criminally.
What conviction found he must have been involved in the murder scheme? I know his conspiracies alleged that could have been a possible overt act, but did the jury actually ever convict him on anything involving murder or state the overt act for the various generic conspiracies was actually the murder allegation?
As far as I can tell the prosecutor said, here is a list of a bunch of possible acts that cover the more generic drug and kingpin conspiracies. And the jury found him guilty that at least some of those happened, but not necessarily the murder-for-hire one. He wasn't found guilty of an actual charge that required murder. It looks like the judge just short-circuited to sentencing him for it despite as far as I can tell no evidence that's what the jury convicted him of.
I find it pretty chilling you can just use a generic conspiracy charge, have the prosecutor say "coulda done any one of those things" and the jury say "well he did at least one of those things, not necessarily the murder bit" and the judge just short-circuit to sentencing like he was guilty of paying for the hit. If the charge is so vague as to not know which elements of the crime he actually guilty of then IMO the sentencing should not be able to presume it must have been the worst thing the prosecutor alleged.
- zirgs 4y agoThe crimes that he was convicted of have wide sentencing guidelines. 10 years to life and 20 years to life. If you're convicted of a crime that carries, say, 1 to 3 years in prison then the judge could not sentence you to anything more than that. So even if you had some weird murder for hire chats on your computer - you would still get 3 years max. Mitigating and aggravating factors don't have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. So the moral of the story is - if you do something illegal - don't commit violent acts as part of it. Judges really don't like that.