[yourapostasy]

It likely wasn't the solicitation for murder that brought on the eye-popping sentencing (and that solicitation charge didn't make it into the final proceedings from what I read), but the entire stack of charges, but that is just my guess. This looks a lot like "throwing the book" at Ulbricht to "make an example" out of him, and try to clamp down on darknet activities. I'm not clear on the wisdom of this approach, as it seems as if it only encourages future darknet participants to increase opsec and "play for keeps", but as I'm just an outside observer, I'll defer to the judgement of the involved prosecutors and law enforcement who are much closer to the details. Would be fascinated to hear from others who follow this much more closely, and their thoughts on why Ulbricht got such a long sentence.

[andylei]

he got a long sentence because the court followed the federal sentencing guidelines [1], determined that his offense level was 50 which maps to life in prison. the court could have chosen a lesser sentence, but they determined that he tried to have 5 people killed to protect his criminal enterprise, which they didn't look too kindly upon. its all in the appeal [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Sentenci... [2] http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/b4f95197-e15...