zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
Wasn’t he in jail for hiring a contract killer?

I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.

>>yuppie+01
No, that charge was dropped. IIRC, it was on shaky ground and they were just trying to throw the book at him.

>>hypeat+L1
The charge was dropped, but the court did hold a hearing on it when deciding on sentencing. They heard the evidence for and against and ruled by a preponderance of the evidence that he did in fact do it.

>>tzs+I3
Then why would they drop the charge if they thought the evidence pointed to the fact he did it.

>>UncleO+V3
Separate courts. He was indicted and tried for all the non-murder stuff in a New York federal court. He was indicted separately in a Maryland federal court on a murder-for-hire charge.

The New York court convicted him, and then considered the murder-for-hire allegations when determining his sentence. They found them true by a preponderance of the evidence and and that was a factor in his sentence to life without parole. He appealed, and the Second Circuit upheld the sentence.

The prosecutors in Maryland then dropped the murder-for-hire charge because there was no point. They said this would allow them to direct their resources to other other cases where justice had not yet been served.

>>tzs+g5
Fascinating. It is news to me that a federal court can consider the evidence for crimes not proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal sentencing. Learn something new every day.

Since he was sentenced federally, he'd be under the federal sentencing guidelines, but I imagine those are pretty harsh around the money laundering and drug trafficking (since they're tuned to provide a hammer to wield against mostly narco-enterprises). I suppose the additional preponderance of evidence gave the judge justification to push the sentence to the maximum allowed in the category?

>>shadow+n9
It’s extremely common in for example diversion cases and others, where the defendant has to stipulate that they are agreeable to things being presented as in charging documents and evaluated based on preponderance by a court, not by a jury and not subject to principles of reasonable doubt.