The violent charges were dropped during the investigation. In effect, he was not judged based on such allegations.
Wikipedia:
> "Ulbricht was charged with money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics,[26][30] and procuring murder.[27] The charge of procuring murder was removed from the indictment[31]"
The jury found that the state made a convincing argument that he ran an illegal website. The jury was not tasked -- and did not find -- with whether he was guilty of murder for hire. Should the state be able to imprison people for crimes no jury has found them guilty of? I argue no: It is unjust and illegal to sentence someone for allegations without having a jury confirm those crimes.
If the evidence against Ulbricht for murder for hire was good, they would have presented it at trial. The fact is that the prosecutors didn't for some reason and he shouldn't be imprisoned for a crime he hasn't been convicted of.
But he hasn't been imprisoned for ordering murder for hire, something he apparently still awaits a separate charge for in Maryland.
He's been imprisoned for amongst other things, "continuing criminal enterprise", and the transcripts of him talking about hits were presented at trial as at evidence that this involved preparedness to take extreme measures to protect his narcotics suppliers comparable to those of drugs kingpins, and not simply being an innocuous libertarian-inclined middleman who built a web platform people chose to buy and sell drugs on, or even your friendly neighbourhood pot-grower. His defence team had the opportunity to challenge the validity of that evidence in determining his guilt and sentencing for the crimes he was charged for and evidently did not succeed in doing so. The difficulties with targets being mostly anonymous (and in some cases possibly nonexistent) and the pseudonymous entity who offered supposed hitman services probably intending to scam Ulbricht might have made a prosecution for five specific instances of murder too uncertain to complicate the case with, but as evidence of Ulbricht's willingness in principle to purchase murders was it certainly relevant to the continuing criminal enterprise charge he was convicted of.
The only thing the authorities decided they could certainly convict Al Capone for was tax evasion. This did not mean that Al Capone was unfairly treated, it simply meant the tax charge were relatively straightforward to make stick.
Judges are permitted, and encouraged, to take into account other evidence around the individual when sentencing. That's why at hearings, you have so many people parading asking for leniency, saying what a good guy the person is. It makes sense that you'd also take into account the other side of that.
Well . . . the charges themselves were all for non-violent offenses. But part of the reason why the sentencing was so harsh was that whole thing where he paid to have five people killed.
> "I find there is ample and unambiguous evidence that [Ulbricht] commissioned five murders to protect his commercial enterprise," Forrest [the judge in the case] said, leaving out one alleged attempted murder for which Ulbricht was charged in a different case.
Maybe you conveniently forget that there was no such proof and that is why the "procuring murder" charge was dropped by the prosecution.
> Of the six murder indictments trumpeted by the U.S. government in the days following Ulbricht’s Oct. 2013 arrest, five have fallen off the table and the sixth sits untouched in a separate indictment (legalese for an unproven allegation) that was purposefully left out of the upcoming trial.
> Prosecutor Serrin Turner used the murder-for-hire allegations to get the judge to deny bail. Now, Turner isn’t even going to charge Ulbricht with the murders.
> Why have six of the most important accusations been left as yet uncharged?
> “Maybe you don’t have that proof,” criminal defense attorney Jay Leiderman told the Daily Dot. “Maybe the proof isn’t as good as you thought it was.”
> There are a couple of other possibilities that deserve mention. First, there may be informants out there that the prosecution doesn’t want to expose, that they want to use for other cases, so they’re willing to leave half a dozen murders uncharged in order to protect him. Second, they may have determined that a relevant informant is unreliable and can’t be used in trial.
> Either way, the murder accusations are buried and uncharged.
Apparently in spite of that they still used that evidence in determining his sentencing. I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it it would be the difference between getting pulled over with a lot of drugs vs getting pulled over with a lot of drugs and a lot of guns that you legally own: Even if you only get charged and convicted of the drug possession the case with the trunk full of guns will in all likelihood experience harsher sentencing.
> Even if you only get charged and convicted of the drug possession the case with the trunk full of guns will in all likelihood experience harsher sentencing.
I quoted someone who was intimately involved in the trial saying there was ample and unambiguous evidence. Your theory on why those charges were not included is one of a number of possible explanations. Another possible explanation was that they felt they had enough to nail him sufficiently on the other charges, and didn't want to bother to prove unnecessary additional offenses.
>Another possible explanation was that they felt they had enough to nail him sufficiently on the other charges, and didn't want to bother to prove unnecessary additional offenses.
Your argument is equivalent to: "As long as a conviction feels good, it doesn't much matter if the due process of law is followed" . It's the equivalent of arguing for a system that is ok with police breaking into a house without a warrant as long as they find something illegal.
> As long as a conviction feels good, it doesn't much matter if the due process of law is followed
What? I don't believe I said anything about "feeling good" anywhere in my comment, so I struggle to fathom how my argument can be equivalent to an argument that includes that term.
? I quoted the judge in the case, who does have the evidence . . .. She didn't presume guilt. She factored evidence of guilt into her sentencing decision.
Here's how it works. If those were the only charges, then your standard of proof would be "beyond a reasonable doubt" (i.e. 97-99% likely). They aren't. Since the other charges were already proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is already going to be incarcerated for the statutory thirty years to life. Now the judge has to decide how much time to give. If the defendant is a saint who made a mistake, maybe they get thirty years. If the defendant is the devil, they might get life. I don't know what standard of evidence the judge is required to use to make this decision, but I'm under the impression that it is not "beyond a reasonable doubt." It is probably more like, "preponderance of evidence," (>50% likelihood). So if the judge believes the most likely scenario is that the defendant is a super bad guy, they might give a harsher sentence.
As an aside, epistemically, you seem to be confused about the meaning of "evidence." Evidence is stuff that causes you to believe something more. Evidence does not imply that there is a 100% certainty of something being true.
I'm aware of what judicial discretion is. I find the idea of using unproven allegations as input into that process to be pretty concerning, though.
> As an aside, epistemically, you seem to be confused about the meaning of "evidence." Evidence is stuff that causes you to believe something more. Evidence does not imply that there is a 100% certainty of something being true.
I'm not confused about what "evidence" is. The thing is that we have a process for determining guilt of crimes, and it's not "a judge thinks evidence is fairly compelling".
We have here someone who was convicted of a specific set of crimes but whose sentencing was driven by another set of unproven crimes. "Factoring in evidence" of those alleged crimes requires assuming that those crimes were committed as alleged, but such assumption violates the presumption of innocence. If the evidence is compelling, then try those crimes.
> didn't want to bother to prove unnecessary additional offenses
Oh, come now. What prosecutor is going to drop murder charges in favor of money laundering and computer hacking charges when they have unambiguous evidence?
I don't know. I don't know too many prosecutors, and whenever I read about them, it's normally related to sensational news stories or even more sensational fictional TV shows. Perhaps you have more direct experience with these elusive creatures and have a better understanding of their mentalities.
> It's strange that sentencing can be increased for crimes you haven't been convicted for.
I feel like judicial discretion in sentencing is pretty well understood, but I guess it could seem strange if you haven't spent much time reading about or experiencing the legal system.
I feel like this is a handwavy answer that doesn't say anything meaningful. In no way does belittling the parent commenter's experience answer why unproven allegations are acceptable to consider in sentencing.
>It's strange that sentencing can be increased for crimes you haven't been convicted for.
Sentencing is a range. Based on the facts presented to the judge during trial and through third parties in the sentencing phase (victim statements, letters from your pastor, parents, friends, and teachers, etc.) judges can choose the low end of the range or the high end of the range. It's no more strange to give someone the high end due to unproven statements of assholerly, than sentencing being more lenient for good qualities that have never been proven.
Defendants are allowed to call "character witnesses" during sentencing hearings to tout what a good person they are, and judges can take that into account. I fail to see why the other way should not be allowed either.
For everyone mentioning Ross hiring hit men to kill people. He was never charged with that. Prosecutors commonly fabricate a story to paint a picture of a defendant for the jury. We will never know for sure if Ross actually did this but he's innocent until proven guilty.
Thanks for that.
For those who want to read more, go to https://freeross.org/making-a-murderer/ (link to Ross's charges and Ross's indictment and more)
Ross's charges at trial were all NON-VIOLENT.
Regardless if it's convincing or not, he's not guilty of the crime.
Imagine this: you steal a bag of Oreos from a 7-11. You are sent to trial. Then the prosecution says you also killed some dude. When all is said and done, you are convicted of shoplifting and receive an insane amount of time in prison but were never actually charged with murder, wouldn't you think that the jury was manipulated?
No, I wouldn't. Because the jury has nothing to do with the sentencing. The prosecution also wouldn't just make up the story of killing some dude; there would be some evidence to link me to that action.
Stop pretending that Ulbricht is some kind of saint, and that there is no evidence of him doing this.
I don't disagree that there may be some kind of evidence to link to that action. But I do believe that evidence can be tampered with to create the illusion. Seriously, a chat transcript is what people cite as evidence? We as a society should doubt accusations until they've been proven to be factual.
There's been numerous cases of people being exonerated of a crime [1] after spending years of their life inside prison.
I'm not trying to pretend that Ulbricht is a saint. He deserves to be in prison for running an illegal market. But if that's all he was ever convicted of, then I believe that the punishment of a double life sentence doesn't fit the crime.
No, no, no, no, no. The chat transcripts were right there for everyone to see. If you're going to claim things were fabricated, you have to prove that.
He tried to have 5 people professionally executed. He broke the law and facilitated others breaking the law because he felt laws took away his personal liberties. He is incompatible with this society and he's dangerous..
And meanwhile Paul Le Roux, who is actually a real drug kingpin and who has ordered the murders of several people across the world (with a well proven track of evidence) is not in prison and is working for the DEA.
Guys, for those who want to bring up the unproven, uncharged murder stuff, please read https://freeross.org/making-a-murderer/
Ross's been smeared in the media enough, let's just help the guy.
No, let's not help the guy. He's not deserving of help. And despite you wanting to claim the murder stuff is "unproven and uncharged", the evidence of his involvement is pretty clear.
"In my eyes, FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed, but then you'd be out your $700k."
"I understand, and that is great news about Xin [being kidnapped]. If I understand the situation, he is the one responsible for your loss."
"I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him? Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position."
"It doesn't have to be clean, and I don't think there are any funds to be retrieved"
"Don't want to be a pain here, but the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k."
"I've only ever commissioned the one other hit, so I'm still learning this market."
No, he's not. He's imprisoned for the crime he was convicted of. The judge, having discretion on how much time he should be imprisoned for, took into account the defendant's character.
Unless these transcripts are entire fabrications, he was rather more hands-on with other criminals than this petition is letting on: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...