7 ms·

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

by 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.
    - wqaatwt 2y ago
      So e.g. >90% (or whatever it’s now multiplied by several times) should be entirely ignored because the legal/judicial system won’t have enough resources to prosecute them?
      - kortilla 2y ago
        Yes. Scale up the judicial system and cut laws if needed. Also, there will likely still be some pleas. Some people own up to being guilty and want to move on. There is an absolute dearth of lawyers to support this. We just need more courts and more judges for the initial surge of a couple of years.
        wqaatwt 2y ago
        So most property crimes will not longer be prosecuted? Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK? Isn’t the American legal system already very bloated and inefficient? So spending even more money on it might not be the best idea?
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK? The purpose of the trial is to separate the innocent from the guilty, and there is intended to be a presumption of innocence. But because the prosecution has to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, they'll tend to only bring cases when there is a high probability of guilt -- a good thing -- so then let's say 90% of the defendants are probably guilty and 60% are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A judge is going to become intimately familiar with that. ~90% of the defendants are actually guilty, so the judge develops the intuition that a new defendant is very likely guilty. That's a presumption of guilt. Soon even the innocent ones are getting convicted, when the whole point of the process was to prevent that. A jury is a fresh set of eyes who look at the defendant as the only case they're going to be deciding for the foreseeable future and haven't been prejudiced by a parade of evildoers sitting in the same chair. It's also twelve separate people who each individually have to be convinced.
- hackingonempty 2y ago
  He wasn't sentenced for attempted murder, the sentence Ulbricht received was within the range provided by statute for the crimes he was convicted of. Judges have discretion in sentencing and they are allowed to consider the character of the defendant. The fact that Ulbricht attempted to murder people was demonstrated to the judges satisfaction during the trial and influenced her to sentence at the higher end of the range allowed for the crimes he was duly convicted.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    The range allowed for those sentences is way too wide. Life without parole is nowhere near reasonable for hacking, money laundering, and drugs. Being within the sentencing range is meaningless when the range encompasses any possible sentence.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      Well, just selling some drugs and laundering the money is one thing. Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity that it could have been it’s own article in a criminal code
      - tveita 2y ago
        His sentence was severe in part because he fell under the "kingping statute". This is based on the amount of drug trade he facilitated, the amount of money he made, and the actions he took as an "organizer". The hits didn't help. > For conviction under the statute, the offender must have been an organizer, manager, or supervisor of the continuing operation and have obtained substantial income or resources from the drug violations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise_Statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise...
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        > Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity Is this a hypothetical or did I miss a big chunk of this story? If the war involves people being hurt, then conspiracy and instruction to injure and murder sound like great things to charge the drug lord with. If it doesn't, then I don't see the severity.
- mandevil 2y ago
  Sentencing is complicated in the US. Generally speaking, they have a huge range and a standard for computing where one falls in that range, but everything within that range is open to judge's discretion. Life without parole was within that range for the crimes that Ulbricht was convicted of. This standard is an enormous document, https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines which lays out the rules for adjustments. Evidence is admissible (by both sides!) for sentencing, with a lower standard of evidence and burden of proof, to either raise or lower the sentence within the very wide numbers of what the conviction was for. So the Judge in this case found that the lower burden of proof was met for additional violent crimes being committed (with Ulbricht's legal team having an opportunity to rebut), and that impacts the sentencing calculations. Not a lawyer, but I have listened to US lawyers on podcasts.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- jjallen 2y ago
  Other acts of those charged are routinely brought up in trials. Fir example, criminals being charged with crime A that already committed similar crimes in the past are used to show that the likelihood of crime A being committed this time is higher.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    Sure, but then you should have to have a conviction on those other crimes. It’s strange to consider stuff that wasn’t proven. If the crime was committed and the state is sure, they should charge him and then use the first conviction in the sentencing for the second, if they want to.
    - jjallen 2y ago
      That’s not what happens in practice. The other actions of those charged are absolutely brought in as evidence whether they were actual crimes or testimony from others that knew those charged. This happens all of the time.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
hammock 2y ago
> a higher standard than most apply in public discourse Is it? Preponderance of the evidence is basically “more likely than not”
- noirbot 2y ago
  Yea, and most public discourse is at the level of "I saw a post online about it once". Most people aren't doing deep research before their opinions about things that aren't actually that relevant to their day to day lives. 95% of the world, at best, still has no idea who Ross Ulbricht is even today.
- torstenvl 2y ago
  That's one way of phrasing it, and unfortunately some jurisdictions have adopted that phrase, but it is not correct. A preponderance of the evidence is the greater weight of the evidence after all evidence is considered. Heuristics along the lines of "yeah that fits my priors"—which is what is actually meant by "more likely than not"—are explicitly disallowed. If Joe Smith in Smalltown, Ohio was hit by a blue bus, and hammock owns 51 of the 100 blue buses in Smalltown whereas torstenvl owns 49 of the 100 blue buses, that is insufficient evidence by itself to prevail by a preponderance standard against hammock in a civil suit.
  - hammock 2y ago
    Thank you for correcting me, and great example

by cmdli 2y ago

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.
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    So e.g. >90% (or whatever it’s now multiplied by several times) should be entirely ignored because the legal/judicial system won’t have enough resources to prosecute them?
    - kortilla 2y ago
      Yes. Scale up the judicial system and cut laws if needed. Also, there will likely still be some pleas. Some people own up to being guilty and want to move on. There is an absolute dearth of lawyers to support this. We just need more courts and more judges for the initial surge of a couple of years.
      - wqaatwt 2y ago
        So most property crimes will not longer be prosecuted? Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK? Isn’t the American legal system already very bloated and inefficient? So spending even more money on it might not be the best idea?
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > Also how exactly are jury trials superior to e.g. Magistrates Courts in the UK? The purpose of the trial is to separate the innocent from the guilty, and there is intended to be a presumption of innocence. But because the prosecution has to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, they'll tend to only bring cases when there is a high probability of guilt -- a good thing -- so then let's say 90% of the defendants are probably guilty and 60% are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A judge is going to become intimately familiar with that. ~90% of the defendants are actually guilty, so the judge develops the intuition that a new defendant is very likely guilty. That's a presumption of guilt. Soon even the innocent ones are getting convicted, when the whole point of the process was to prevent that. A jury is a fresh set of eyes who look at the defendant as the only case they're going to be deciding for the foreseeable future and haven't been prejudiced by a parade of evildoers sitting in the same chair. It's also twelve separate people who each individually have to be convinced.
hackingonempty 2y ago
He wasn't sentenced for attempted murder, the sentence Ulbricht received was within the range provided by statute for the crimes he was convicted of. Judges have discretion in sentencing and they are allowed to consider the character of the defendant. The fact that Ulbricht attempted to murder people was demonstrated to the judges satisfaction during the trial and influenced her to sentence at the higher end of the range allowed for the crimes he was duly convicted.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  The range allowed for those sentences is way too wide. Life without parole is nowhere near reasonable for hacking, money laundering, and drugs. Being within the sentencing range is meaningless when the range encompasses any possible sentence.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    Well, just selling some drugs and laundering the money is one thing. Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity that it could have been it’s own article in a criminal code
    - tveita 2y ago
      His sentence was severe in part because he fell under the "kingping statute". This is based on the amount of drug trade he facilitated, the amount of money he made, and the actions he took as an "organizer". The hits didn't help. > For conviction under the statute, the offender must have been an organizer, manager, or supervisor of the continuing operation and have obtained substantial income or resources from the drug violations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise_Statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise...
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      > Being some much a drug lord that you start a war on other drug lords is so much on a different level of severity Is this a hypothetical or did I miss a big chunk of this story? If the war involves people being hurt, then conspiracy and instruction to injure and murder sound like great things to charge the drug lord with. If it doesn't, then I don't see the severity.
mandevil 2y ago
Sentencing is complicated in the US. Generally speaking, they have a huge range and a standard for computing where one falls in that range, but everything within that range is open to judge's discretion. Life without parole was within that range for the crimes that Ulbricht was convicted of. This standard is an enormous document, https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines which lays out the rules for adjustments. Evidence is admissible (by both sides!) for sentencing, with a lower standard of evidence and burden of proof, to either raise or lower the sentence within the very wide numbers of what the conviction was for. So the Judge in this case found that the lower burden of proof was met for additional violent crimes being committed (with Ulbricht's legal team having an opportunity to rebut), and that impacts the sentencing calculations. Not a lawyer, but I have listened to US lawyers on podcasts.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jjallen 2y ago
Other acts of those charged are routinely brought up in trials. Fir example, criminals being charged with crime A that already committed similar crimes in the past are used to show that the likelihood of crime A being committed this time is higher.
- echoangle 2y ago
  Sure, but then you should have to have a conviction on those other crimes. It’s strange to consider stuff that wasn’t proven. If the crime was committed and the state is sure, they should charge him and then use the first conviction in the sentencing for the second, if they want to.
  - jjallen 2y ago
    That’s not what happens in practice. The other actions of those charged are absolutely brought in as evidence whether they were actual crimes or testimony from others that knew those charged. This happens all of the time.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

hammock 2y ago

> a higher standard than most apply in public discourse Is it? Preponderance of the evidence is basically “more likely than not”

noirbot 2y ago
Yea, and most public discourse is at the level of "I saw a post online about it once". Most people aren't doing deep research before their opinions about things that aren't actually that relevant to their day to day lives. 95% of the world, at best, still has no idea who Ross Ulbricht is even today.
torstenvl 2y ago
That's one way of phrasing it, and unfortunately some jurisdictions have adopted that phrase, but it is not correct. A preponderance of the evidence is the greater weight of the evidence after all evidence is considered. Heuristics along the lines of "yeah that fits my priors"—which is what is actually meant by "more likely than not"—are explicitly disallowed. If Joe Smith in Smalltown, Ohio was hit by a blue bus, and hammock owns 51 of the 100 blue buses in Smalltown whereas torstenvl owns 49 of the 100 blue buses, that is insufficient evidence by itself to prevail by a preponderance standard against hammock in a civil suit.
- hammock 2y ago
  Thank you for correcting me, and great example