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.

Comments

Spaghetti on a slick wall fails to stick

[goombah99]

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.

Re:And which law would you have them nullify?

[Kjella]

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.

And who's to stop them? This is why the legal system hates jury nullification, you can rule not just on the facts and the law but on who the accused and the victim are. Slutty drunk girl? Rape charges dismissed. White guy on trial killing a black guy? Murder charges dismissed. You can find several people in this thread who'd give him a free pass to break any law he wants because he's some sort of "hero" to them.

If the legislative and/or judicial branch of the government is broken then trying to fix it with jury nullification is like putting a band aid on a man that has jumped on a grenade, the rules will keep changing until the rule of law is restored. It's random as one man is convicted today and another is let go tomorrow for the same crime depending on who's on jury duty. Take a look at your average jury, do you really think it would be used most for the right or wrong reasons? Even smart people here are more than willing to abuse it, now imagine the dumb ones.