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Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
An anonymous reader sends an update on the trial of Ross Ulbricht, the man behind the Silk Road online black market. Sentencing is now complete, and Ulbricht has been given life in prison. He had been facing a 20-year minimum because of the charge of being a "drug kingpin," and prosecutors were asking for a sentence substantially higher than the minimum. Prior to the sentence being handed down today, Ulbricht spoke before the court for 20 minutes, asking for leniency and for the judge to leave him a "light at the end of the tunnel." The judge was unswayed, giving Ulbricht the most severe sentence possible. She said, "The stated purpose [of the silk road] was to be beyond the law. ... Silk Road's birth and presence asserted that its creator was better than the laws of this country. This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous." Ulbricht's family plans to appeal.
... and the authorities will question you.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Do you believe he was treated differently then any other kingpin?
Considering this is a more severe punishment than the majority of rapists receive, something is very wrong indeed.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I think Ulbricht has a pretty good case for an appeal here. Take the part in the article where the federal prosecutor mentioned that people had died from overdoses of drugs they had purchased on Silk Road. The way the prosecutor says this, they make it sound like Ulbricht had something to do with their deaths by overdose, when in all likelihood they would have purchased drugs and overdosed from somewhere other than Silk Road had the site not existed. The same thing goes for the failed attempt at hiring a hitman - they didn't charge him in that case, and yet it was still being brought up as "character evidence".
I really fail to see what makes Ross Ulbricht any different from a regular drug dealer on the street (few of whom get life sentences) other than the massive amount of media attention that Silk Road got and that he was dealing drugs over the internet.
Selling drugs and weapons are only serious crimes if you're not the government.
Oh? You forgot for a minute that the CIA's major money maker is dealing illegal drugs? You even forgot about them selling weapons to or otherwise directly arming dangerous criminals involved in the drug trade? I mean, it's not like Sinaloa, the largest and most powerful drug cartel in the US and Mexico, was put in power directly because of the Drug Enforcement Agencies support, right?
I don't know of any country on earth where heroin, methamphetamine etc. can be bought and sold freely among consenting adults. So you probably should say something is wrong with human society.
Still we're talking non-violent crimes... Compare this to the money laundering schemes many major American banks have been fined for... But in which no criminal persecution took place.
I'm sure someone mass marketing the rape of millions across the internet and attempting to have detractors killed would face a worse charge. The point was not the single crime but rather the mass-marketing and distribution of the crime.
The Tenth Amendment explicitly, and the Ninth Amendment implicitly, ban the Federal Government from use of any power not explicitly specified in the Constitution as amended. I don't see anything in there that explicitly gives the Federal Government to ban any drugs or traffic in them, or in any way regulate such traffic (beyond forbidding false advertising claims, setting standards for labeling, and the like). (Do YOU find any such power in there? If so, please point it out to us.)
The Commerce Clause? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
He most certainly was treated differently from other kingpins; the bribe he waved at the judge wasn't nearly big enough, apparently, and his efforts to taint the jury appear to have been entirely ineffective. If he had been a real drug kingpin, he would have walked.
According to the sourced wiki article the use of pot went up a small amount while all the harder drugs saw measurable drops in use. They are also probably getting much more reliable statistics now that people don't need to lie.
How much of that is due to people who simply failed to report their crimes, but now feel comfortable enough to be honest about their drug use.