Are you speaking of yourself?
Ulbrichtâs defense attorneys do not dispute that he started Silk Road and used the moniker Dread Pirate Roberts at that time. But the whole point of the nickname, if you recall William Goldmanâs novel and Rob Reinerâs film, The Princess Bride, is that many different people assumed the same name at various times. The defense claimed that Ulbricht left Silk Road for an extended period of time and only rejoined the site right before his arrest. In fact, a new Dread Pirate Roberts relaunched Silk Road 2.0 on Nov. 6, 2013. The new operator promised a ânew and improvedâ version of the site, according to Forbes.
Moreover, the defense stated quite lucidly that even if Ulbricht were the DPR, it still did not prove him guilty of illegal activity. A pre-trial motion argued that Ulbricht merely operated the site but did not engage in any of the illegal buying or selling of narcotics in the same manner as a landlord owns and oversees a building wherein he is not responsible for the conduct of his tenants. âA landlord is not a co-conspirator of, and/or liable for, the criminal conduct of his tenants, regardless whether the landlord knows that the premises are being used for illegal purposes,â the motion states. âAnalogously, no landlord has been prosecuted under the federal controlled substances statutes for renting an apartment to a known drug seller. Nor has any internet service provider been prosecuted because users of the service engage in illegal transactions using the providerâs internet service.â
The governmentâs case was riddled with such hypocrisy. The motion went on to invoke the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, in which Congress âmanifested a support for a free-wheeling internetâ where web hosts can operate without fear of civil liability for the content posted by others, according to Ulbrichtâs lawyer. And, even though Ulbrichtâs case was a criminal proceeding, rather than a civil one, the motion contended that the Communications Decency Act nonetheless âprovides firm and indisputable support for limiting the application of criminal statutes in the internet context when the alleged illegal conduct itself is performed not by the defendant, but by others using his web site.â
Iâm A-Okay with that. His crimes matched his punishment, IMO.
Itâs good that you added the âIMO.â In the real world, Ulbrichtâs so-called crimes donât even remotely match his absurdly malicious sentence.
And yet, he was convicted by a jury after a full and open trial.
Your opinion, my opinion, just opinions, eh? Iâm glad heâll rot in a cell.
Full and open? I would pull quotes from the article below, but, frankly, thereâs just too much ridiculous behavior recounted from this trial to leave anything out.
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I think the word thatâs missing is âFairâ.
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Ulbricht himself was, in fact, specifically connected to the contracts. The chats where the contracts were set up, the records of the Bitcoin transactions to pay for them, and the electronic forensic evidence that linked all of those records to him were introduced into evidence, subjected to unrestricted critical cross examination by Ulbrichtâs attorneys and ultimately both the judge and the jury found it convincing.
So you can either believe the evidence or you can go with âitsh all a big conshpirshy to frame a holy martyr whosh only crime was to give teh peepul free and unrestricted access to life-destroying addictive drugs.â
No matter how much you want it to be otherwise, and whatever reason it is that impels you to believe it, the facts established at trial under the exacting standards of the Federal Rules of Evidence notwithstanding, this little prick wasnât just facilitating the sale of weed. Maybe that was his plan, but he discovered, as all other high-level dealers in illicit substances have discovered before him, the process takes on a life of its own and you are soon faced with the choice of either walking away or descending into evil. The anonymity he built for himself made it easier for him to walk away without fear of getting murdered or jailed than any figure in the long history of organized criminal activity before him. And he chose not to do that.
Youâve reached some astounding conclusions regarding activities that were never part of the charges against Ulbricht and have yet to be adjudicated. Moreover, you clearly turn a deaf ear to all of the governmentâs âstaggering corruptionâ in the investigation. The condescension and vitriol youâve displayed here belies a thoughtful appraisal of a criminal case. Did he kill your dog? Send you some shitty weed?
Yeah, it often happens that people want to make arguments in court that they canât because they arenât supported by admissible evidence. It doesnât mean they were railroaded or treated unfairly. It means they couldnât support their arguments with admissible evidence.
Or it is supported by admissible evidence and an overzealous judge merely overrules it. That happens too.
I think heroin and other opioids are bad and the people who traffic in them are worse. And the further removed from the death and destruction they, the worse they are. Call me crazy.
And, as an attorney, I have a fundamentally different understanding about what was and was not adjudicated. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that because he wasnât indicted on the attempted murder charge, the facts underlying those allegations were not proven. And you are just completely wrong about that.
Under U.S. v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), all of the facts underlying sentencing factors applied under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines must be introduced into evidence and found as fact by the jury âbeyond a reasonable doubtâ even when (or, more accurately, especially when) those facts arenât necessary to establish the elements of the crime for which the defendant was indicted and is being tried. Otherwise, the judge cannot use them in calculating the sentence under the FSGâs without violating the defendantâs Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
The jury did, in fact, hear the evidence that supported the allegations that he took out contracts on five people. The jury did, in fact, find that the facts that evidence was introduced to prove were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that the prosecution chose not to indict him for attempted murder because of the interagency jurisdictional squabbles it had with the Maryland office is irrelevant. They still had to prove the facts that would have supported conviction of those crimes in order to use them as sentencing factors for the crimes they did convict him of.
Which rulings, exactly, would you be referring to? The fact that an evidentiary ruling sucks for your clientâs case doesnât make it wrong. I have yet to see any call she made that was clearly wrong and most of the calls she made that people have been complaining about were clearly right.
As an attorney, what would your conclusion be regarding a case where the primary investigating agents are subsequently arrested for money laundering, wire fraud, theft of government property, and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the target of their investigation? The same agents who took every opportunity to embezzle and steal, and then launch investigations, including issuing subpoenas and civil forfeiture proceedings, against a variety of bitcoin and payment companies that were reluctant to help the agents convert their stolen material into dollars? And what would your conclusion be about the target of the so-called murder-for-hire plot when you learn that he was an addict and seller of both heroin and cocaine who was arrested with $37,000 worth of marching powder and then made a deal with the government regarding his own charges if he could help bring down the DPR by any means? Should I write a line here, as you did, in fractured respelling to indicate the accented stupidity of your belief in the sanctity of government trials? Is that what they teach you in law school? How to be a condescending ass?