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Ross Ulbricht Found Guilty On All 7 Counts In Silk Road Trial
blottsie writes Ross Ulbricht was convicted on Wednesday of running Silk Road, a Dark Net black market that became over a $100 million Internet phenomenon before Ulbricht's 2013 arrest. Ulbricht was found guilty on all seven felony charges he faced, including drug trafficking, continuing a criminal enterprise, hacking, money laundering, and fraud with identification documents. He faces up to life in prison for these convictions.
I was shocked at how bad Ulbricht's defense was. They threw out two theories, hoping to raise reasonable doubt, and both were trounced by the government's evidence. Even if Ulbricht had really sold the site shortly after creating it and then was invited back recently to be the fall guy- he's still guilty of the conspiracies he was charged with because he came back in an admin role.
I assume he picked his own lawyer and didn't have a public defender, but they were terrible. If you know you're going to court with a dog shit defense, just plead guilty and hope for leniency. Maybe the lawyer advised that and Ulbricht refused.
Yup, and as mentioned most of us won't even bother reading the transcript to know the difference.
That's why injustice exists. Not because evil exists, but because apathy does.
My understanding of the Continuing Criminal Enterprise conviction is that it means he will be spending life behind bars without the possibility of parole, with no discretion afforded in to the judge in sentencing.
the FBI guy did catch him in the library at a computer with the silk road admin page on the screen
is the public supposed to read the transcripts of every criminal trial?
i finally read TFA, you are correct:
they'll probably still try him
but indeed, it's rather pointless, with the other charges he's not getting out of prison regardless
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously. RoknrolZombie makes a ridiculous point. If justice meant every citizen had to read every court transcript then justice would be impossible.
Instead, we hire professionals to do that work for us. We call them "judges". To be extra super careful, instead of just having one judge we have several layers of judges who can overrule findings. The system is open to critique on the details but I can't imagine a fundamentally different system that would be better.
No, but it's a reasonable prerequisite for those who are expressing strong opinions about the outcome.
If they really want to make sure he stays in forever, they'll try him on this too. Only finding him guilty of the DPR charges means that they're the only thing keeping him in - an appeal might fix that. If he is found guilty of the murder-for-hire charge as well, his chances of successfully appealing them both and getting out are likely poor.
The idea that it should be illegal to knowingly profit from transactions of highly illegal products is not exactly an obscure or particularly controversial area of jurisprudence, nor it it an example of overly-broad vaguely-worded laws, like, say, CFAA prosecutions.
And jury nullification is supposed to be for juries to nullify illegal laws (i.e. unconstitutional ones), not laws they might have a personal disagreement with.
Opinions about the outcome don't matter. Due process doesn't allow for crowd sourced judgments. The legal procedure is well established and time-tested.
The guy is guilty as charged. That's not open to opinion and not reversible by public vote.
There are appeal process, other until then, let be written, so let it be done.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
In the case where there's a state and a federal case, often the state will step aside and let the feds try theirs first and if they get the conviction, leave it with that. That is what happened with the loony who shot Gabby Giffords and others in Arizona. AZ had murder and attempted murder cases against him, but so did the federal government, since he killed a federal judge and tried to kill a congressman. AZ let the feds arrest and try him, so they incur the cost of imprisoning him in their facilities. He's away for life anyways, so it doesn't matter. In the event the federal case had failed, AZ could have then stepped in and moved forward on their charges.
Or you know, you could just hop on a plane to Colorado.
I've been following this trial for the last few weeks reading Ars, Wired, TechDirt and listening to Free Talk Live. The Judge basically hamstringed the defense ruling that they should only receive the prosecution's evidence against him...the weekend before the trial began. That right there is such a fundamental insult to the basic rights of any accused that should horrify and enrage anyone who believed in our justice system's impartiality. Add that to the fact that the judge allowed the the prosecution to use the accusations that Ulbricht hired assassins to be considered by the jury even though none of that has been proven or even competently investigated, that is a massive miscarriage of justice on stupendous levels that should frighten anyone living in the US. Evidence such as screenshots implicating his guilt that could have easily been forged were accepted without question....the list goes on. They also disallowed Andreas Antonopoulos, an expert witness on understanding how BitCoin and it's blockchain works to help the jury understand what they were hearing so to form a basis on how to poke holes in the Fed's story....this is almost a blatant showing of the corruption of our justice system and it's subservience to US intelligence services as the Snowden revelations. I'm not saying Ulbricht was innocent...I don't know that...but what happened in this trial was in no way anything but a kangaroo court on display in full form. Ulbricht's guilt is still up in the air, but our government was guilty of far worse crimes merely in that Manhattan courtroom the last 4 weeks.
Prohibition of (most) drugs: yes. Prohibition of crazy machine guns, child slavery (or any kind of slavery, really), murder-for-hire, etc... not so much. I'm all for a better, safer drug market, but the way to go is working to lift prohibitions on drugs that shouldn't be illegal, not this.
The statute specifies a mandatory minimum of 20 years:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...
Good time takes 13% off of that.
However, mandatory minimums aren't always so mandatory. Due to waiting until the last minute to handle some paperwork, I once went to jail for driving without a license. That had a mandatory minimum sentence of three days in jail. I was picked up Monday night and got out first thing Tuesday morning - so about 10 hours. Later, the prosecutor said to me "time served will work, right? Monday to Tuesday, that's three days isn't it?"
indeed, assuming he was guilty, and the jury thought so. Press accounts pretty damning and red handed in the arrest. then it seems like those charges omitted what Id consider the most heinous crime: soliciting the murder of 5 people.
I loved his lawyers theory that the Mt Gox mogul was really the mastermind. That would have been such a wickedly cool story. Since the FBI seized the assets of Silk Road about the same time Mt Gox had some liquidity problems it even seemed failntly plausible. I'd love to hear what the jury made of that piece of spaghetti on the wall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If he did it, he's a hero. He should be celebrated as the next Jeff Bezos for innovating a new way to do commerce online. Making the black market a safter place is a good thing, prohibition is what's wrong.
\
Now you will just have to hire hit men on amazon prime. Dude, he tried to get 5 people killed. He's not a hero just because you think he stuck it to the man and sold you your drugs on line.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes they do. For a stable society, the public at large must believe that trials are decided justly.
Probably. All he was doing was running bit torrent. He had an open port on his laptop! The feds used that to hack the computer and plant the private keys to the silk road's bitcoin wallet, as well as the mastermind's criminal diary and accounting records. And then made the silk road page come up and log in.
Then they pounced.
Open ports. Not even once.
Sense you apologized, we'll let it slide. But if we find out you read another article you will be asked to leave.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
These are separate charges. In the case I'm talking about the whacko killed a number of people, and injured more. Some of them were just ordinary civilians, and so it would be Arizona law that would cover it. However some of them were federal employees and federal law would cover it. So he could be tried for some of the crimes under state law, some of them under federal. No jeopardy problems with that.
Maybe I'm late to the party here, but I only just now realized that Dread Pirate Roberts' actual legal defense was that he'd left the ship to his cabin boy, and has been retired for the past 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.
The legal system is fucked up. While we probably shouldn't throw people in jail based on public opinion based on one-sided news reports we need to ensure the legal system actually provides for a fair trial. That's not happening in ANY case right now.
"The federal guilty plea rate has risen from 83% in 1983 to 96% in 2009,[24] a rise attributed largely to the Sentencing Guidelines." - Federal guilty pleas and trial rates, U.S. Sentencing Commission
Where there may have been some resemblance of fairness judges hands today are tied and prosecutors use this to force pleas out of those whoa re accused. There is no such thing as a fair trial as such would require a defence teams with millions of dollars at there disposal. The government on the other hand has that kind of money to selectively (for those who don't plead guilty) target those who object and demand a trial. The prosecutors suppose to be impartial to some degree and provide evidence to the defence. The reality is they aren't and routinely forget about evidence that might help the defence.
That's why injustice exists. Not because evil exists, but because apathy does.
Build on that thought......go out and help a homeless person today. You don't have to be apathetic just because everyone else is.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's a good thing he used Bitcoin then, with the public audit record in the block chain.
Traditional money laundering with cash would make it almost impossible to trace.
We don't have a "justice system."
We have a "legal system." Just because the law was followed does not mean justice was done.
As with most glibertarian arguments, there is a hidden clause that does a lot of heavy lifting.
sPh
You're wrong. But I don't care enough to explain why.
Justice was done because the law was followed.
If you are aware of evidence to the contrary, you need to step forward and be heard.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Funny. I read the indictment and I knew straight away that the guy was fucked. It's almost as though the feds had a bit of a problem with somebody running a market for drugs, weapons, money laundering, stolen goods & credit cards, and hitmen and poured all their time and effort into taking it down.
As much as I agree that this case seems to have lots of holes in it, running a marketplace is not 'common carrier'. The important distinction is that a common carrier is paid to provide a 'connection' service, after which you can do anything you like with it. A marketplace connects a buyer to a seller, handles the money, and takes a fee for that introduction. Thus, the marketplace has to know what is being sold and whom the buyer and seller are, and further more collects the money from the buyer and gives it to the seller.
Had the Silk Road been more like a chat room, then there'd be many more parallels with the 'common carrier'. If Silk Road had provided the place to advertise goods and to connect buyers to the sellers, but otherwise kept out of any transactions, it's possible the 'common carrier' thing might work. However, as soon as SR started handling the money, it became part of the transaction, and so became implicated. As I understand it, the goods and services didn't have 'code names', so there's no way DPR could claim he thought he'd just brokered a 'cleaning' service for someone's apartment - so no 'reasonable doubt' there either.
No he was an active facilitator for _every_ transaction. Claiming that to be the equivalent to an ISP is just showing ignorance in both the silk road and ISP responsibilities.
By your fucked-up logic, anyone who does something illegal in front of witnesses is simply defending himself if he hires someone to kill the witnesses.
except soldiers, with the rare exception of scout snipers, are trained to aim for the centre of mass (the trunk). Head shots are rare in the extreme, especially over ranges above 7 yards.
EHP is designed to expand or explode in a mushroom fashion on impact, turning into many smaller tumbling fragments that shred whatever they're passing through. This is what's called projectile spalling. Boattail hardpoint rounds are designed to drill through the point of impact causing hard tissue such as bone, to shatter and spall through while the projectile remains largely intact and expend its energy drilling through. If a BT doesn't hit bone, it causes little damage compared with a hollowpoint with the same muzzle energy.
BTW, the US claiming jurisdiction in a war zone doesn't wash with the ICC. Under Bush who said no US citizen, soldier or contractor will be held to account for the death of any foreigner (2002ish), anyone who picks up a rifle under the banner of the Star and Stripes is potentially a war criminal.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel