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Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges. Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part

by bko 2y ago

Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges. Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing. He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering. Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?

karlgkk 2y ago
It does not change my opinion that the sentence was well deserved in the eyes of the law. Those are all things, that independently, can lead to serious jail time. The scale of his operation was also substantial.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  There are murderers who hardly do more than a few years in prison. He was jailed for much longer than what violent criminals get.
  - gretch 2y ago
    yeah it's a tragedy - those violent criminals should have received more time
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      Yet nobody complaints about that on HN on a daily basis
      - cbg0 2y ago
        Calm your whataboutism, folks on HN are not in support of violent criminals doing less time.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    There are also many murderers who get life. And serve it all. So, it's also true he was jailed for a much shorter time than what violent criminals get. Your comment is negated.
    - echoangle 2y ago
      How is it negated? If he did a crime that’s strictly less bad than a murder, him being sentenced to a longer sentence than even a single murderer shows that something is wrong. It doesn’t matter if 99% of murderers actually get longer sentences.
      - listenallyall 2y ago
        That's "two wrongs make a right" logic. Because the justice system fucked up in the past, even once, that should prevent anyone else from receiving a proper sentence? Secondly, Ulbricht was an accessory to thousands of drug deals. You think that none of those consumers of those drugs died as a result? He could easily be responsible for multiple, dozens, hundreds of deaths - far more than most anyone locked up for life.
        oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
        > You think that none of those consumers of those drugs died as a result? All kinds of products kill consumers every day, and we don't consider the person who sold them responsible. And the suppliers of those products heavily encourage and even manipulate people into buying them; do we know whether Ulbricht even advertised his services?
        listenallyall 2y ago
        You could debate it forever - some people obviously think drugs are relatively harmless and pose no societal threat, others think drugs are poison and anyone involved in selling or distributing them is a potential murderer. The OP made a dumb comment about the length of the prison sentence in comparison to a murderer, I pointed out a) that while the OP thought it was too long, the same exact logic could be used to say it was too short and b) his original premise about the relative degrees of the "badness" of crimes was not an absolute. You're welcome to disagree, however the comment above is unconvincing. Ulbricht dealt in drugs which he knew from day 1 were unquestionably illegal in this country.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Cause violence against funds is what really matters
- aml702 2y ago
  [dead]
cmdli 2y ago
He was found during sentencing to be guilty of hiring a hit on a competitor using a preponderance of evidence (lower then presumption of innocence). While this is a lower standard than a conviction, it is still a higher standard than most apply in public discourse.
- roenxi 2y ago
  That isn't fair, the point of the trial is to test whether something is to be acted on. To act on something that wasn't directly part of the trial is a bit off. I'm sure the judge is acting in the clear legally, but if someone is going to be sentenced for attempted murder then that should be after a trial that formally accuses them of the crime.
  - wahern 2y ago
    This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence. For both aggravating and mitigating circumstances evidence does need to be submitted, and there are standards of proof to be applied. It's just that the procedural rules can be different and, depending on the context and jurisdiction, sufficiency can be decided by the judge alone. In some jurisdictions, for example, aggravating evidence may need to be put to the jury, while mitigating evidence need not be. The U.S. is rather unique in providing a right to jury trials for most--in practice almost all, including misdemeanor--criminal cases. And this is a major factor for why sentencing is so harsh and prosecutions so slow in the U.S. In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence. It isn't supposed to cut both ways. The prosecution is supposed to have the higher burden, and admitting unproven allegations is excessively prejudicial. > In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose. The lesson from this should be to make the protections strong enough that they can't be thwarted like this. For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one. It's not supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to be rare.
rappatic 2y ago
Did you read my comment? I said: > even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it. In fact, reading the chat logs makes his guilt pretty clear. Of course, because the whole operation was a scam, there's little he could have been convicted of. Yet just because the murder was never carried out doesn't mean he didn't intend to have someone assassinated. In my book, paying someone money to kill another person is definitely grounds for imprisonment.
- scarab92 2y ago
  > Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it That’s exactly what it means under the presumption of innocence. Advocating for the continued imprisonment of someone for something they are legally considered innocent of, is quite literally vigilantism.
- bko 2y ago
  So you think people should be sentenced based on charges that were not proven in court?
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    So you should apologize for not paying attention to the original comment before stamping in to 'correct' it. A little manners goes a long way.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    That happens all the time, when people confess to a charge ahead of time, instead of proceeding to a trial. Remember that the purpose of the trial is to find out whether they are guilty when there is a factual dispute about that question. Here, I suppose the existence of a factual dispute is itself disputed: does that need to go to a jury, or is it enough that the trial judge and the appeal court looked at the record and decided there wasn't a dispute?
duxup 2y ago
The other user directly addressed that in his comment.
nuclearnice3 2y ago
This opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case. [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391926/gov-uscourts-nysd-422824-142-0.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
- simonsarris 2y ago
  This opinion (after appeal) also details how they taken into consideration with sentencing. See pages 130-131 https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_opn.pdf https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_o...
- srj 2y ago
  It's surprising to me that the prosecutor is allowed to essentially insinuate crimes to influence the jury, without the need to prove them. That seems to undermine the process because it creates a "there's smoke so there must be fire" mentality for the jury.
  - tveita 2y ago
    There was plenty of evidence that he ordered the hits, and the defense had the opportunity to address the evidence in court. The chat logs go far beyond "insinuation" It's ridiculous that people are pretending there is any doubt about his guilt because they like crypto and/or drugs.
    - echoangle 2y ago
      So why not properly charge him then? Do you not think the optics are a bit weird when you sentence someone to life for something relatively small, but the reason is another crime you’re very sure he did but you didn’t bother to charge him with?
      - 2y ago
lmm 2y ago
I don't see how that should change anyone's opinion on whether the sentence was deserved. Whether it was legally/procedurally correct, sure. Whether he didn't get the day in court he should have had, sure. But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed, what he deserves is a long prison sentence, and whether that's imposed by a court doing things properly, a court doing things improperly, or a vigilante kidnapper isn't really here or there on that point. (The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  You say the rule of law is important, but also we should impose extra-legal long sentences even if the rule of law doesn't allow us to? How do you reconcile this perspective?
  - lmm 2y ago
    I say people sometimes deserve sentences longer than that which the law imposes on them. I didn't say anything about what we should do in that case.
- lotharcable 2y ago
  > The rule of law is important, The rule of law says innocent until proven guilty. The reason they didn't go after him for murder for hire allegations isn't because they felt bad for him or that they didn't want to waste tax payer's money. The reason they didn't go after him for 'murder for hire' was that they knew there was no merit in it. This is self evident.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    They did go after him for "murder for hire"; the murders were part of his conspiracy predicates, and evidence for them was introduced. This stuff about him not being taken all the way through a case charged on murder-for-hire, after receiving a life sentence in a case where those murders were part of the case, is just message board jazz hands.
cyberax 2y ago
[flagged]
empathy_m 2y ago
Honestly any time I read the procedural history of this stuff I get nerd sniped by the bizarre details and I lose track of the big picture. I feel like the whole thing could be three competing Dateline NBC style six-part crime specials and I still wouldn't get tired of it. Ross heard that one of his Silk Roads moderators was arrested, and so he hired someone to kill the mod? The assassin sent a confirmation photo of his mod, asphyxiated and covered in Campbell's Chicken and Stars Soup?? The supposed assassin was actually a corrupt DEA agent who later served federal prison time for crimes so embarrassing that they were never fully disclosed?!?! There is some kind of thorny moral question I cannot quite wrap my brain around. Ross did not successfully have anyone killed, but it seems that he must have thought he was successful? Ross (it is alleged, and chat logs seem to show) ordered someone's death and paid for it and got explicit confirmation that they were dead. [actually several someones.] Did he feel like a murderer at this point? What a fascinating, real life Raskolnikov style figure. Later, perhaps much later, he gets strong evidence that the murder was fake. Nothing has changed in the outside world after he learns this -- the victim is no more alive before or after he learns this. Does this change his identity? Is he more or less of a murderer than before? Do the people who kill with modified Xbox controllers from a warehouse in Las Vegas do the same kind of killing that Ross thought he did? And then there is some kind of moral thought experiment happening at a Silicon Valley Rationalist, Effective Altruism kind of scale that I can't quite wrap my head around. Do people matter as much in person as if they're just blips on a screen you'll never meet? If Ross could have sent 1 BTC to prevent fatal malaria in a dozen young kids, thousands of miles away, but he didn't, should he feel responsible in some way for their death? Is he about equally responsible for them as for the online people he is pretty sure he ordered killed from afar, but never met? It's just a lot. The whole story is supernaturally intense; it's hard to believe it was real. It will make for great TV. See, e.g. - https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-sentenced-to-time-served/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-... for the faux forum moderator killing - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-who-claimed-commit-murders-hire-silk-road-founder-ross-ulbricht https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w... for the other faux five killings (another scam on Ross - he thought he was having extortionists killed? he kept getting confirmations?)
- krupan 2y ago
chrisco255 2y ago
Does anyone know if Ross had a jury trial and if not, why not?
- mihaaly 2y ago
  He had a jury trial.
r0mboCom 2y ago
[dead]
pg5 2y ago
Couldn't you buy stuff on Silk Road that would ruin your life, like meth or heroin? If true, not exactly a victimless crime to run the site.
- butlike 2y ago
  You can buy sugar at the grocery store which can ruin your life. What's your point? People can get addicted to anything.
  - pg5 2y ago
    So you think heroin, which frequently kills people the first time they try it, should be able to be sold without consequence? Certainly an interesting take.
    - butlike 2y ago
      If the support structures are in place for when people fall, then sure. Right now I don't think we're anywhere close to that, though

by bko 2y ago

karlgkk 2y ago

It does not change my opinion that the sentence was well deserved in the eyes of the law. Those are all things, that independently, can lead to serious jail time. The scale of his operation was also substantial.

ekianjo 2y ago
There are murderers who hardly do more than a few years in prison. He was jailed for much longer than what violent criminals get.
- gretch 2y ago
  yeah it's a tragedy - those violent criminals should have received more time
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    Yet nobody complaints about that on HN on a daily basis
    - cbg0 2y ago
      Calm your whataboutism, folks on HN are not in support of violent criminals doing less time.
- listenallyall 2y ago
  There are also many murderers who get life. And serve it all. So, it's also true he was jailed for a much shorter time than what violent criminals get. Your comment is negated.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    How is it negated? If he did a crime that’s strictly less bad than a murder, him being sentenced to a longer sentence than even a single murderer shows that something is wrong. It doesn’t matter if 99% of murderers actually get longer sentences.
    - listenallyall 2y ago
      That's "two wrongs make a right" logic. Because the justice system fucked up in the past, even once, that should prevent anyone else from receiving a proper sentence? Secondly, Ulbricht was an accessory to thousands of drug deals. You think that none of those consumers of those drugs died as a result? He could easily be responsible for multiple, dozens, hundreds of deaths - far more than most anyone locked up for life.
      - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
        > You think that none of those consumers of those drugs died as a result? All kinds of products kill consumers every day, and we don't consider the person who sold them responsible. And the suppliers of those products heavily encourage and even manipulate people into buying them; do we know whether Ulbricht even advertised his services?
        listenallyall 2y ago
        You could debate it forever - some people obviously think drugs are relatively harmless and pose no societal threat, others think drugs are poison and anyone involved in selling or distributing them is a potential murderer. The OP made a dumb comment about the length of the prison sentence in comparison to a murderer, I pointed out a) that while the OP thought it was too long, the same exact logic could be used to say it was too short and b) his original premise about the relative degrees of the "badness" of crimes was not an absolute. You're welcome to disagree, however the comment above is unconvincing. Ulbricht dealt in drugs which he knew from day 1 were unquestionably illegal in this country.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  Cause violence against funds is what really matters
aml702 2y ago
[dead]

cmdli 2y ago

He was found during sentencing to be guilty of hiring a hit on a competitor using a preponderance of evidence (lower then presumption of innocence). While this is a lower standard than a conviction, it is still a higher standard than most apply in public discourse.

roenxi 2y ago
That isn't fair, the point of the trial is to test whether something is to be acted on. To act on something that wasn't directly part of the trial is a bit off. I'm sure the judge is acting in the clear legally, but if someone is going to be sentenced for attempted murder then that should be after a trial that formally accuses them of the crime.
- wahern 2y ago
  This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence. For both aggravating and mitigating circumstances evidence does need to be submitted, and there are standards of proof to be applied. It's just that the procedural rules can be different and, depending on the context and jurisdiction, sufficiency can be decided by the judge alone. In some jurisdictions, for example, aggravating evidence may need to be put to the jury, while mitigating evidence need not be. The U.S. is rather unique in providing a right to jury trials for most--in practice almost all, including misdemeanor--criminal cases. And this is a major factor for why sentencing is so harsh and prosecutions so slow in the U.S. In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > This cuts both ways as judges often adjust their sentencing downward based on mitigating evidence. It isn't supposed to cut both ways. The prosecution is supposed to have the higher burden, and admitting unproven allegations is excessively prejudicial. > In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose. The lesson from this should be to make the protections strong enough that they can't be thwarted like this. For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one. It's not supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to be rare.

rappatic 2y ago

Did you read my comment? I said: > even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it. In fact, reading the chat logs makes his guilt pretty clear. Of course, because the whole operation was a scam, there's little he could have been convicted of. Yet just because the murder was never carried out doesn't mean he didn't intend to have someone assassinated. In my book, paying someone money to kill another person is definitely grounds for imprisonment.

scarab92 2y ago
> Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it That’s exactly what it means under the presumption of innocence. Advocating for the continued imprisonment of someone for something they are legally considered innocent of, is quite literally vigilantism.
bko 2y ago
So you think people should be sentenced based on charges that were not proven in court?
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  So you should apologize for not paying attention to the original comment before stamping in to 'correct' it. A little manners goes a long way.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  That happens all the time, when people confess to a charge ahead of time, instead of proceeding to a trial. Remember that the purpose of the trial is to find out whether they are guilty when there is a factual dispute about that question. Here, I suppose the existence of a factual dispute is itself disputed: does that need to go to a jury, or is it enough that the trial judge and the appeal court looked at the record and decided there wasn't a dispute?

duxup 2y ago

The other user directly addressed that in his comment.

nuclearnice3 2y ago

This opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case. [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391926/gov-uscourts-nysd-422824-142-0.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...

simonsarris 2y ago
This opinion (after appeal) also details how they taken into consideration with sentencing. See pages 130-131 https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_opn.pdf https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_o...
srj 2y ago
It's surprising to me that the prosecutor is allowed to essentially insinuate crimes to influence the jury, without the need to prove them. That seems to undermine the process because it creates a "there's smoke so there must be fire" mentality for the jury.
- tveita 2y ago
  There was plenty of evidence that he ordered the hits, and the defense had the opportunity to address the evidence in court. The chat logs go far beyond "insinuation" It's ridiculous that people are pretending there is any doubt about his guilt because they like crypto and/or drugs.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    So why not properly charge him then? Do you not think the optics are a bit weird when you sentence someone to life for something relatively small, but the reason is another crime you’re very sure he did but you didn’t bother to charge him with?
    - 2y ago

lmm 2y ago

I don't see how that should change anyone's opinion on whether the sentence was deserved. Whether it was legally/procedurally correct, sure. Whether he didn't get the day in court he should have had, sure. But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed, what he deserves is a long prison sentence, and whether that's imposed by a court doing things properly, a court doing things improperly, or a vigilante kidnapper isn't really here or there on that point. (The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)

mvdtnz 2y ago
You say the rule of law is important, but also we should impose extra-legal long sentences even if the rule of law doesn't allow us to? How do you reconcile this perspective?
- lmm 2y ago
  I say people sometimes deserve sentences longer than that which the law imposes on them. I didn't say anything about what we should do in that case.
lotharcable 2y ago
> The rule of law is important, The rule of law says innocent until proven guilty. The reason they didn't go after him for murder for hire allegations isn't because they felt bad for him or that they didn't want to waste tax payer's money. The reason they didn't go after him for 'murder for hire' was that they knew there was no merit in it. This is self evident.
- tptacek 2y ago
  They did go after him for "murder for hire"; the murders were part of his conspiracy predicates, and evidence for them was introduced. This stuff about him not being taken all the way through a case charged on murder-for-hire, after receiving a life sentence in a case where those murders were part of the case, is just message board jazz hands.

cyberax 2y ago

[flagged]

empathy_m 2y ago

Honestly any time I read the procedural history of this stuff I get nerd sniped by the bizarre details and I lose track of the big picture. I feel like the whole thing could be three competing Dateline NBC style six-part crime specials and I still wouldn't get tired of it. Ross heard that one of his Silk Roads moderators was arrested, and so he hired someone to kill the mod? The assassin sent a confirmation photo of his mod, asphyxiated and covered in Campbell's Chicken and Stars Soup?? The supposed assassin was actually a corrupt DEA agent who later served federal prison time for crimes so embarrassing that they were never fully disclosed?!?! There is some kind of thorny moral question I cannot quite wrap my brain around. Ross did not successfully have anyone killed, but it seems that he must have thought he was successful? Ross (it is alleged, and chat logs seem to show) ordered someone's death and paid for it and got explicit confirmation that they were dead. [actually several someones.] Did he feel like a murderer at this point? What a fascinating, real life Raskolnikov style figure. Later, perhaps much later, he gets strong evidence that the murder was fake. Nothing has changed in the outside world after he learns this -- the victim is no more alive before or after he learns this. Does this change his identity? Is he more or less of a murderer than before? Do the people who kill with modified Xbox controllers from a warehouse in Las Vegas do the same kind of killing that Ross thought he did? And then there is some kind of moral thought experiment happening at a Silicon Valley Rationalist, Effective Altruism kind of scale that I can't quite wrap my head around. Do people matter as much in person as if they're just blips on a screen you'll never meet? If Ross could have sent 1 BTC to prevent fatal malaria in a dozen young kids, thousands of miles away, but he didn't, should he feel responsible in some way for their death? Is he about equally responsible for them as for the online people he is pretty sure he ordered killed from afar, but never met? It's just a lot. The whole story is supernaturally intense; it's hard to believe it was real. It will make for great TV. See, e.g. - https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-sentenced-to-time-served/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-... for the faux forum moderator killing - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-who-claimed-commit-murders-hire-silk-road-founder-ross-ulbricht https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w... for the other faux five killings (another scam on Ross - he thought he was having extortionists killed? he kept getting confirmations?)

krupan 2y ago

chrisco255 2y ago

Does anyone know if Ross had a jury trial and if not, why not?

mihaaly 2y ago
He had a jury trial.

r0mboCom 2y ago

[dead]

pg5 2y ago

Couldn't you buy stuff on Silk Road that would ruin your life, like meth or heroin? If true, not exactly a victimless crime to run the site.

butlike 2y ago
You can buy sugar at the grocery store which can ruin your life. What's your point? People can get addicted to anything.
- pg5 2y ago
  So you think heroin, which frequently kills people the first time they try it, should be able to be sold without consequence? Certainly an interesting take.
  - butlike 2y ago
    If the support structures are in place for when people fall, then sure. Right now I don't think we're anywhere close to that, though