[pcthrowaway]

I'm not going to argue Ulbricht shouldn't be serving a serious sentence, assuming legitimacy of the evidence of his murder-by-hire attempt.

However, he wasn't convicted on those charges. He was convicted of 'conspiracy to traffic narcotics', money laundering, and 'computer hacking'. The 'hacking' and laundering were only necessities of the narcotics trafficking business, so it really does boil down to him being convicted to a life sentence for the drug distribution business.

I'd take no issue with a life sentence for procuring murder, but see it as an absolute travesty that drugs are demonized to the point where a life sentence for trafficking is even a possibility.

[devoply]

I don't think it's just for a lifetime sentence for anything but murder itself... or someone who is an actual danger to individuals or society itself. I think what got Ulbricht in the end was the fact that he was acting like a drug kingpin and so they threw the book at him hard. It wasn't one of those things that did him in, it was all of those things combined that earned him a life sentence.

[nickpsecurity]

That's it. Diversity of crime plus arrogance in execution usually equals a strong punishment.

[theWatcher37]

The biggest crime is that the people who wrote, voted for, and executed these laws won't see a day behind bars.

[mirimir]

It's arguable that killing people was the FBI's idea. It's a standard tactic for them.

Edit: I should have said "LEA's".

[tptacek]

One of the killings is traceable to an investigator. Four others were not.

[mirimir]

Nob was apparently a very dark influence on him.

And nobody was actually killed.

[tptacek]

Check out lawcomic.net for a good explanation of inchoate crimes.

[mirimir]

Sure, I get that.

But LEA does commonly engage in entrapment.

Maybe Roger Thomas Clark is also an undercover agent. I wonder if he'll ever go to trial.

[s73ver]

No, it's not. He ordered the hits. He, himself, did it.

[mirimir]

Yes, he apparently did.

But it's not clear where the idea came from. Some say that it was his mentor Roger Thomas Clark aka Variety Jones aka Cimon. Some say that it was DEA agent Carl Force aka Nob. In any case, it's clear that Ross was initially shocked by the idea.

[tptacek]

No, the opposite is true. As the appeals decision points out multiple times, Ulbricht was startlingly casual both about hte decision to order people killed and in his reaction to evidence that the killings had occurred. His ostensible hired assassin informed Ulbricht that he could have a target killed, but that he couldn't attmept to recover Ulbricht's funds unless he also paid for the assassination of several of the target's associates --- people Ulbricht had no ostensible connection to at all. Ulbricht essentially said "fuck it, whatever you think will help recover some of my funds" and paid for additional gratuitous killings.

Importantly: this case had apparently nothing at all to do with Force, who was involved in a different murder-for-hire scheme, one for which Ulbricht could still stand trial (but probably won't, since his life sentence is now overwhelmingly likely to stand).

[mirimir]

Weren't those other "murders" all cons by scammers?

I'm arguing that he was initially shocked by the idea of killing people. But I don't disagree that he later became comfortable with the idea.

[tptacek]

We don't know. The prosecution's burden was to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, to a jury, that Ulbricht himself believed he was ordering people killed. They succeeded, and it's not hard to see why.

[Zeppin]

Was he?

The chat logs of the first incident seem to suggest that he took some time to come around to it but he didn't seem to find it particularly horrifying or objectionable.

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-boss-first-murder-at...

[s73ver]

No, it's pretty clear that Ross himself ordered the hits. He did it of his own volition, and he is the sole person responsible for doing so.

[accountyaccount]

yet to be proven

[s73ver]

His own chat logs show him ordering hits.

[accountyaccount]

The burden of proof is on the government to prove that those were his chat logs and they weren't altered. Until he's formally tried he's innocent of that accusation.

[greggh]

The murder for hire charges were dropped. No evidence of them was shown in court. Because they knew they couldn't win on that one.

[tptacek]

This is simply false, and moreover, false in each of its particulars.

First: as the appeal opinion clearly states, there's still an open case against Ulbricht for the Force-related murder-for-hire scheme in Maryland. The charges have not been dropped.

Second, evidence of the murder-for-hire charges was presented in court. It was an element of the conspiracy charge. Not only was it presented, but it was presented in a way that Ulbricht's defense was obligated to rebut it.

Finally, the murder charges were presented again during sentencing, and proven to a "preponderance of evidence" standard during that process as well.

These details are all spelled out in the appeals decision.

[2845197541]

I thought they couldn't even prove that the people to be murdered even existed.

[tptacek]

They don't have to. In federal law (and in several states), you're guilty of attempt if prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you had the intent to commit a crime, and took some substantial step towards it.

They've more than cleared that bar here.

[Mtinie]

Even if there is no actual target?

For example: Is the rational that if I earnestly believed I was planning on murdering someone who I thought existed, that it is the lead up and consideration that is the crime, rather than the actual attempt (which could never happen)?

[tptacek]

Yes. That's why we have a crime of "attempt". You do not need to have a likelihood of success; it only needs to be proven that you did intend, and that you took substantial steps. Ulbricht spent more money on these crimes than most people earn in 10 years.

[bluetwo]

1.2 billion dollars in drugs, making him a "kingpin".

[saulrh]

So I went looking at this number to see how it stacks up to existing drug distribution.

The US market for illicit marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin was just over $100B in 2010. This lines up well with estimates that legal marijuana in Colorado was around $1B. If we're going to look at how big this guy was in absolute terms, his global market was the size of a single illicit drug in a single state.

This is where I run out of data. What's the usual sentence for single-state single-drug distributors? My impression was always that it took huge infiltration operations to get the management with more than a few years on technicalities, and the only way to get more than that was to hit them with charges like murder, bribery, or conspiracy.

[bluetwo]

The minimum sentence for the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute is 20 years, but pretty much everyone gets life, once all the other charges are added on.

Saying he only had 1% of the US market is a ridiculous way to look at it. I'm sorry but I can't muster any sympathy for this guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise

[saulrh]

Thanks for the legal link. I'd gone googling for "kingpin law" and hadn't found it. That explains that, and why my guess was wrong: I'd been looking at cases from before its introduction.

> I'm sorry but I can't muster any sympathy for this guy.

If we're really going to get into this discussion...

The marketplace was inherently driven by "customers find and buy" rather than "suppliers market and sell" and the supply chain had tighter feedback loops, meaning that there were few mechanisms or motivations for suppliers to worsen their customers' habits. Additionally, the use of mail, cryptocurrency, and a website reduced the possibility for Things To Go Wrong, eliminated threats of force, disallowed predatory loans and bartering, and I presume provided conflict-resolution protocols that didn't involve "busting a cap in yo ass". Finally, doing it by internet and mail reduced or eliminated suppliers' ability to interact each other, forcing them to compete by attracting customers The Way Smith and Young Intended and wiping out entire classes of harm relating to organized crime and bad product.

This guy was not a saint, he did something bad, the lesser of two evils should not get off. But I hold the position that the silk road was the economic equivalent of a safe injection site, unquestionably a better harm-reducer than the War on Drugs, and that a rational approach to harm reduction supports it.

[bluetwo]

I can agree to a point here. Black markets will pop up anytime something is banned, and this was just a novel way for that to happen. The activities that come along with black markets aren't necessarily the fault of the thing being sold.

The war on drugs has failed to stop drugs, but has created a very profitable war on drugs machine, that includes extra police, equipment, for-profit prisons, etc. We all pay for that.

However, this guy made choices. And he knew exactly what he was doing, and consciously contributed to every single one of these problems, and did it solely for the profit. I know he held to a strong libertarian philosophy, but how is that helping him now? It's not.

If you want to fix these problems, make people aware. Make them campaign issues. Donate to candidates who support good solutions. Vote. Protest. Use jury nullification. Fix the broken DEA schedule system. But don't sell 1.2 billion dollars of drugs and call yourself a hero.