[clamprecht]

The problem is they didn't have to prove anything here. It's very common in federal court to plead and be convicted of one thing, and then they bring in all this other shit at sentencing. The burden at trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", but the bar at sentencing is "preponderance of the evidence" I believe. And I don't buy it for a second that the judge thought about this sentence for 100 hours. Federal judges sentence people to life in prison every single week, and they are appointed for life - do the math. I wish there were a tally of stats of how many life sentences each judge has handed out to defendants.

In my case, I was convicted of a crime that was for the physical theft and sale of circuit boards, had nothing to do with the Internet or hacking, and yet I was banned from the Internet upon my release from prison. This part of the sentence was out of the blue, and we had no opportunity to even prepare a defense for it (and in 1995, no one in the court room really knew what the Internet was except me and a few of my friends who attended the hearing). It's really fucked but it's their modus operandi.

[tptacek]

That's not true. The murder-for-hire scheme wasn't simply "related conduct": it was also a predicate of the conspiracy charge, which had to sustain a "reasonable doubt" standard at trial, and a sentencing accelerator that met a "preponderance of evidence" standard during sentencing. Both are discussed in the transcript.

I do appreciate the color from your own experiences. It's certainly not my contention that sentencing is in general fair, or even that this particular sentence was fair. Certainly: sentencing for computer crimes is egregiously unfair.

But the Ulbricht trial gets past a lot of these issues. The judge notes:

* Ulbricht paid to have someone killed. He was told that person had a wife and child. Ulbricht paid anyways. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.

* Later, Ulbricht paid to have someone else killed. The would-be assassins informed him that the target lived with 3 other people. Ulbricht paid extra to have those people killed too. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.

At this point in the transcript, it's like: what do you think is going to happen?

[clamprecht]

Ok, then I was misinformed on Ross's case, if he was convicted for the murder conspiracy. I don't know first-hand what happened in his case. I do know first-hand what happened in my case (and in many of cases of friends) where the US Attorney (the prosecutor) misled the court or outright lied, or had a witness lie, to get the defendant a higher sentence. They do it so routinely that it casts doubt on all cases now (for me, at least).

[trhway]

>if he was convicted for the murder conspiracy

he wasn't. Alleged murders, without ever being tried before court, were used to cause sentence enhancement. All the "evidence" and "testimony" for the murder charges weren't even enough to sustain the charges, less bring them for trial. At the time of the conviction, it wasn't known that the agents were corrupt and thus, not surprisingly, the Judge gave their testimonies all the possible weight and came down that hard on the Ulbricht.

[trhway]

>At the time of the conviction, it wasn't known that the agents were corrupt and thus, not surprisingly, the Judge gave their testimonies all the possible weight and came down that hard on the Ulbricht.

stand corrected. Judge did know that the agent was corrupted. The murder-for-hire allegations used at the sentencing didn't even have as much as a testimony of corrupt agent behind them.

[tptacek]

I can't possibly blame you. You were also sentenced during a period of hysteria about computer crime. It must have sucked a lot.

I might be biased, since ToneLoc is what got me started programming.

[trhway]

>But the Ulbricht trial gets past a lot of these issues. The judge notes:

>* Ulbricht paid to have someone killed. He was told that person had a wife and child. Ulbricht paid anyways. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.

>* Later, Ulbricht paid to have someone else killed. The would-be assassins informed him that the target lived with 3 other people. Ulbricht paid extra to have those people killed too. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.

if remember all these were based only on the testimonies of those couple of corrupt agents, and all these charges were quietly dropped. The charges were never tried before any court, including the court where drug related charges and conviction happened. The charges were only conveniently mentioned by the prosecution and judge took them account. Thus a cyberpunk became blood thirsty low-life drug dealer. Pretty dirty, though standard, trick one can say. It makes a joke out of "not guilty until proven".

[tptacek]

They're right there in the indictment! Also, this article summarizes a transcript of the sentencing hearing. The judge discusses this at length in the transcript. Read the indictment! Read the transcript! It's interesting stuff, and you don't have to get all your info second- and third-hand!

[trhway]

yes, like in the previously available court documents (like the Maryland indictment which was basis for the prosecutors to mention the charges) pretty much everything about the murders comes from those agents (actually mainly from the one of them). The transcript doesn't contain anything to add to the previously available documents, it just basically summarizes and mentions what has been already stated elsewhere.

[tptacek]

No, this is not the case, and is in fact something you can only say if you haven't read the transcript of the sentencing hearing.

[dragonwriter]

> That's not true. The murder-for-hire scheme wasn't simply "related conduct": it was also a predicate of the conspiracy charge, which had to sustain a "reasonable doubt" standard at trial

It was not a predicate, it was one of three different overt acts charged in furtherance of the conspiracy. At least one overt act must be found for a conspiracy charge, but the charge to the jury did not require separate factual findings on each charged overt act. While each juror must have found it true beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed some overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, we don't know if all, some, or none of them found the murder for hire one to have been proven.

So, really, there was no meaningful finding relating to the murder for hire allegation at trial; in sentencing, yes, what you say about it as an accelerator is accurate.