[michaelby]

Everyone seems to be looking at this as some sort of travesty of justice. However, there is significant evidence that he tried to order hits on people. While there's no (public) evidence that he successfully murdered anyone, he clearly had lost his regard for human life.

We're in a day and age where people can cause tremendous harm to others using their mind alone, without throwing a punch or pulling a trigger. Just because he didn't personally cause physical harm to people doesn't mean he can't cause it to happen!

I think it's important for society to be protected from people with his mindset.

[imh]

From other comments, it seems he wasn't tried for that stuff though. I don't think it's a good thing to include considerations in sentencing that he wasn't tried for. If there's evidence he did that, and you want to put him away for a long time because of it, then try him for it!

Punishing him for that without trying him for it seems like punishment without trial, which is bad. The alternative is that this punishment is just for nonviolent stuff, for which it seems excessive.

[zanny]

His convictions were for hacking (and I'd love to know the details on that... who exactly did Ross hack?) criminal enterprise conspiracy, and narcotics trafficking. The closing is in a pdf somewhere up the thread.

No attempted murder charges though.

This man is literally going to jail forever on the charge of proividing people a place to buy opium. Maybe he tried to hire hits, but that didn't make the final conviction list, though some in this thread are trying to say that "narcotics conspiracy" is a broader charge that somehow? includes murder for hire charges.

[wyager]

This sentencing had nothing to do with the alleged hiring of a hitman. That accusation should have absolutely no bearing on this sentence.