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I know he wasn't convicted of hiring a hitman, and I know the attempt didn't succeed, but he still tried to kill other people. Moreover, during a Bitcoin confer
by I_am_tiberius 2y ago
I know he wasn't convicted of hiring a hitman, and I know the attempt didn't succeed, but he still tried to kill other people. Moreover, during a Bitcoin conference, he gave a live talk from prison via phone and still lied, claiming they planted the log on his laptop. A full pardon is ridiculous. It's unfair to so many people, including his partners like Variety Jones, also known as Thomas Clark. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he won't do anything like this again.
- HlessClaudesman 2y agoActual murderers get out in the time that Ross served. The concept of justice must include an element of proportionality, I would argue that Ross's sentence, for a first time non-violent criminal, was over the top. Without proportionality justice becomes arbitrary, based more on luck and your connections to power. We punish those we can punish: the little guy. Whilst those running governments, corporations and networks that facilitate repression, hatred and genocide go scot free.
- immibis 2y agoYeah, but in that case, we should pardon all people convicted of drug possession or distribution, not specifically Ross.
- HlessClaudesman 2y agoSure, sounds good. The war on drugs was a dumb idea. Let's spend 1/4 of that all the drug enforcement money on harm reduction.
- Algent 2y agoWasn't silk road selling way more than just drugs ? Like, pornography and gun, worldwide. When you facilitate both sex trafficking, organized crime and potentially terrorism you can't exactly be surprised you get hit with everything.
- diggan 2y agoHuge leap from "selling pornography" to "facilitate sex trafficking"... Where you get the sex trafficking part from?
- eckmLJE 2y agoNo, silk road did not sell weapons. There was legal content like pornography and other media on there, but Ulbricht was an idealist and excluded material with "intent to harm".
- kerkeslager 2y agoNotably, as Ullbricht predicted, the Silk Road was immediately replaced by sites which did not have such ideals, and openly sold weapons and illegal pornography.
- consp 2y agoThey were there already and shutting down the silk road changed nothing in that perspective.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoSo all the people who got convicted for selling firearms on Silk Road, how'd that happen then?
- kerkeslager 2y agoIt didn't happen. Ctrl-F for "Products" on this page[1] and stop making shit up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)
- Algent 2y agoInteresting and surprising they really had rules, thanks for the clarification. I'm ashamed to say I opened this page and read it wrong the first time by skipping the first sentence.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoWe punish people all the time for non-violent, white-collar crime; often very severely. Bernie Madoff got sent to prison for 150 years and died there and, as far as I know, he never solicited a murder for hire.
- archerx 2y agoBernie committed a crime worse than murder; stealing from the rich.
- kerkeslager 2y agoMadoff is the exception rather than the rule--and even Madoff operated his Ponzi scheme for over 40 years before being prosecuted. Madoff's arrest and prosecution was actually pretty ineffectual in my opinion. If an amoral person can live as one of the richest men in the world for 40 years in exchange for spending the last 10 years of their life in minimum-security prison, I think a lot of amoral people would take that trade.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoBernie Ebbers and Jeff Skilling both got more than 20 years for Enron. The CEO and co-owner of NCFE got 30 years and 25 years respectively for their role in a securities and wire fraud relating to that business.
- kerkeslager 2y ago> In December 2019, Ebbers was released from Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth, due to declining health, having served 13 years of his 25-year sentence, and he died just over a month later.[1] ...living until the age of 61 as one of the richest men in the world, then spending 13 years in minimum-security prison. > In 2013, following a further appeal, and earlier accusations that prosecutors had concealed evidence from Skilling's lawyers prior to his trial, the United States Department of Justice reached a deal with Skilling, which resulted in ten years being cut from his sentence, reducing it to 14 years. He was moved to a halfway house in 2018 and released from custody in 2019, after serving 12 years. [2] ...living until the age of 53 as one of the richest men in the world, then spending 12 years in minimum-security prison. Re: NCFE: Lance K. Poulsen went to jail at 65, and while I wasn't able to find out his current situation, he's about due to get out of jail if the other cases are any indication[3]. Rebecca S. Parrett, 60, fled after her conviction and was arrested at age 62 in Mexico, largely due to fleeing to a country with robust US extradition (why?)[4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Ebbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Ebbers [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling [3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-national-century-financial-enterprises-ceo-sentenced-30-years-prison-co-owner https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-national-century-finan... [4] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fugitive-ohio-executive-previously-convicted-role-28-billion-fraud-arrested-mexico https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fugitive-ohio-executive-previ...
- pc86 2y ago"Actual murderers get out in less than a decade" is a reason to put actual murderers in prison forever, not to let everyone else out even sooner.
- tasty_freeze 2y agoIf a Mafia boss never strong armed a merchant, never busted any kneecaps, and never pulled a trigger but simply paid other people to carry out various crimes, should the law give him a short sentence because he was non-violent? I don't know what the appropriate sentence for Ulbrecht, but I think your claims about proportionality are missing the fact he didn't just direct commit a few crimes, such as trying (unsuccessfully) to hire a hitman, but he facilitated hundreds of thousands of crimes. Maybe you think selling drugs and guns to randos should not be illegal, but that is a separate question of whether or not he broke the laws as written. As for your last point, I don't disagree that the wealthy/powerful/connected live under a different justice system than everyone else.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- graemep 2y agoI once noticed (in the UK) that two people who I read news stories about in the same week got similar sentences. One for breach of copyright, one for sexually assaulting a teenager. That said, I think Ross did knowingly enable violence?
- johnwheeler 2y agoI don’t think he should have been sent to ADX Florence, but gen pop in San Quentin seems reasonable. Give him 10 more years in Jail me says!
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- rossfan 2y agoBecause the federal government would never plant a log on his computer in order to obtain a conviction. Next people will be saying the CIA killed JFK. How can we lose faith in the judicial system, fuck, the very government considering how consistently benign and trust worthy its been time and time again.
- snapcaster 2y agoI honestly have no idea what the truth of the case was, but it is crazy to me how people never seem to update their priors on what the US gov is capable of. Everytime they get caught doing something like this people go "wow thats crazy" and then immediately go back to telling everyone saying non-mainstream ideas to take their meds
- lvass 2y agoPoe's law.
- perihelions 2y agoHe did kill people. That factored into his sentencing[0]: the multiple overdose deaths from heroin and other things Ulbricht sold/facilitated/took a cut of the proceeds of. He killed children. - "During the sentencing hearing, Forrest heard from the father of a 25-year-old Boston man who died of a heroin overdose and the mother of a 16-year-old Australian who took a drug designed to mimic LSD at a post-prom party and then jumped off a balcony to his death. Prosecutors said the two victims were among at least six who died after taking drugs that were bought through Silk Road." [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road-mastermind-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-drug-bazaar https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/silk-road... ("Silk Road Mastermind Handed Life in Prison for Drug Bazaar" (2015)) It's squarely within the Overton window to impose extremely harsh sentences for people who sell heroin*. Most (?) Asian countries *execute* people who sell heroin. Trump himself has proposed, multiple times over the years, executing US heroin dealers[1,2]—which underscores the incredible degree of hypocrisy behind this pardon. *(It's also within some people's Overton windows to contemplate the opposite of this, in a framework of harm minimization. I can't steelman this argument in the specific case of Ulbricht. Is it harm reduction to sell heroin? Is it harm reduction to sell fatal drugs to high-school age kids?) [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43465229 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43465229 ("Trump urges death penalty for drug dealers" (2018)) [2] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1152847242/trump-campaign-execute-drug-dealers-smugglers-traffickers-death-row https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1152847242/trump-campaign-exe... ("Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Here's why that probably won't happen" (2023))
- JohnnyLarue 2y agoYes, but Ulbricht is a very different case. He's white, you see.
- itsoktocry 2y ago[flagged]
- perihelions 2y agoJudge Forrest absolute nailed this, in her withering response to one of Ulbricht's appeal attempts: - "“No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court,” she said. “It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did.”" https://www.vice.com/en/article/unsealed-transcript-shows-how-a-judge-justified-ross-ulbrichts-life-sentence/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/unsealed-transcript-shows-ho... ("Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht’s Life Sentence" (2015)) In an increasingly nihilistic world, I'm glad people like Forrest still exist.
- maxlin 2y agoRidiculous? He was in prison for 10 years.
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoA full pardon means the individual gets their legal record cleared (as if the crime never happened).
- snapcaster 2y agothey don't get the 10 years back dude jesus christ
- ddtaylor 2y agoNobody will undo whatever has been done to him. I don't know all of the specifics but I have spoken on HN here about my incarceration at much much much lower level facilities. This man was at a USP and at other times other facilities. Those are places where even with the best intentions you are not expected to move in any capacity without serious safety concerns. We're talking "shower with your boots, a spotter and and a shank on you" environment without the slightest joke. It took a while likely because Ross is non-violent and smart, but eventually he was unable to stay in general population to some capacity. My understanding is he has spent significant time in solitary confinement or PC - effectively the same thing at these facilities, very small single cell rooms with a slot in them and the minimum required 1 hour of "yard time" per day, most of which has been suspended to some degree due to COVID and the slow response. The end result is this guy for sure has spent months to years in a very small cell, possibly without even seeing the sun. I didn't see the sun "for reals" for 6 months. A keyboard warrior can swoop in here and talk about how they cannot do this or how X time restrictions exist, but the reality is they just need to move you back to your cell on paper for a day and then back in or trick you into signing some kind of paperwork consenting. My heart goes out to both of them and I am reminded that I was the person that help mined the first 1FREEROSS Bitcoin vanity address to help crowd fund his defense. Lyn never gave up the slightest even during times that were fucking impossible to imagine.
- wonderwonder 2y agoThe issue is that so many of the officials that investigated him were corrupt. How can we be confident any of the evidence was real. He is obviously not innocent but when at least 2 of the investigators went to jail for crimes committed during this investigation it casts serious questions on the validity of the case as a whole. The police, DEA and Secret service have vast power they can use against the populace. If those same agents are committing crimes then it taints the entire investigation and prosecution. If a cop is found to have planted drugs on past arrestees, quite often a good portion of his other cases are thrown out as well as he has corrupted everything he touched. It likely doesn't rise to the legal doctrine of "fruit from a poisoned tree" but its in the ballpark. For the people downvoting me for some reason: A DEA agent involved in the investigation "was sentenced to 78 months in prison for extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice" A secret service agent involved in the investigation "was sentenced to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco following his earlier guilty plea to one count of money laundering."
- verteu 2y agoA few moments' research reveal many reasons to think the evidence was real, eg: Ulbricht's right-hand-man Roger Thomas Clark, who was involved in one of the murder-for-hire conversations, admitted the conversation was real during his trial: "In his own remarks, Clark didn't comment on that murder-for-hire conversation—which he at one point claimed had been fabricated by Ulbricht but later conceded was real." https://www.wired.com/story/silk-road-variety-jones-sentencing/ https://www.wired.com/story/silk-road-variety-jones-sentenci...
- wonderwonder 2y agoRoss is no angel. I'm not disputing that its real, I'm just saying I have a real issue convicting someone when the investigating officers are committing crimes during the investigation. Law enforcement has almost unlimited power. Corruption should be a massive red flag in any case.
- danju 2y ago[dead]
- rco8786 2y ago> I'm pretty sure he won't do anything like this again. Famous last words, eh?
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoOn the contrary, his not guilty plea, his ongoing insistence on his innocence, and libertarian true-believer tendencies etc. suggest the opposite.
- LincolnedList 2y agoNext time he will double check the hitman is legit