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
Ironically, he was only pardoned for drug related crimes, so he could still be charged with murder related ones if they were not dropped with prejudice (i didn't look)

This is all AFAIK, they haven't released the text broadly yet, but his lawyers/etc say he was pardoned for crimes related to drugs.

Even what people call a 'full and unconditional' pardon is usually targeted at something specific, not like "a pardon for anything you may have ever done, anywhere, anytime' which people seem to think it means sometimes.

It's more of a legal term of art to describe pardons that erase convictions, restore rights, etc.

Rather than clemency which, say, commutes your sentence but leaves your conviction intact.

>>DannyB+X9
One issue with any potential trial for murder-for-hire is that the allegation as presented in the Maryland indictment has two problematic witnesses: DEA agent Carl Force who acted as the hitman, now in prison for embezzling cryptocurrency from the Silk Road case, and Curtis Green, the would-be victim in this case, who has previously insisted that Ulbricht was innocent of plotting his murder (and was also recently imprisoned for cocaine distribution last year, although I don't think that would be too relevant). Maybe the other allegations might have more meat on the bone, but they didn't make it on to any indictment.