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by kylebenzle 2054 days ago
Please stop repeating lies about a man who can't defend himself.

Those charges were dropped and there is no reason to believe that the state was not lying when they laid them on him.

2 comments

Ulbricht kept very detailed records of everything he did, sorted by year/month/day, stored on his Windows laptop.

He definitely thought he had ordered the death of at least one, possibly more, errant employees.

I am aware that the errant employee and the hitman he hired were all FBI cutouts.

> Those charges were dropped

Dropping charges doesn't mean it's not true, just that the prosecutor did not want to pursue the case, in light of other prosecution available.

Regardless, we don't punish people on the basis of dropped charges.

If he wasn't convicted, then we shouldn't talk about the punishment he deserves to get for those charges.

Courts do not. We however can express opinions as we see fit.
Indeed, "can" and "should" are very different
We know Kings of England have committed murders. We know dictators have committed atrocities. We know Germany attempted to get Mexico to attack the US. Should we not talk about those things just because they haven’t been tried in court? No, that would be crazy. We should talk about those things because they did happen and there is evidence.

And there is evidence in this scenario too, is there not?

> And there is evidence in this scenario too, is there not?

Not all evidence is created equal and the situation here where there was a functioning fair court system is quite different from situations where there isn't one. There was definitely some irregularities in the investigation, and a possibility of entrapment.

Regardless, i don't take issue with talking about it, i just take issue with saying he deserves to be punished for it when the allegations were never proven in court. He should be punished for the things its proven he did, not the things he might have done.

I didn't realize people were sentenced based off dropped charges?
Yes. This should scare us all. Hiring a hitman was both suggested and pushed by someone acting on behalf of the government, and an entrapment defence had better than a 50/50 chance of working, or they wouldn't have dropped charges.

Ross is no moral hero, but let's not pretend he was treated fairly or reasonably by law enforcement or the court.

socially guilty or innocent. there are some that all it takes is accusations but legally absolutely.
I thought we were presumed innocent until proven guilty? Or should I just allege some charges against you?
In truth, that really depends on where you fit into the legal/court system. Spurious allegations can be libelous, so make sure you have the right kind of clout, position, and justification before alleging anything serious, especially if you fall into the "private citizen" camp when making the aforementioned claims.