zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
Here is what the discussion looked like almost a decade ago: >>9626985

Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted, while the facts of the case did not. There is a really cultural shift visible in how this issue is seen on here.

>>consta+2v1
I'd be wary of drawing correlations like this. The people who commented on that thread are not going to be the same people commenting on this one. The topic isn't even the same; in the first thread the topic is his sentencing, and in this its his pardon.

The attraction for people to post on Hacker News is mainly to complain, and so in the first you get complaints the sentencing is too harsh, and in this one you get complaints that he shouldn't have been pardoned. Its not necessarily a cultural shift, just an artifact of the types of discussions people have online.

>>rescri+Jz1
its crazy to look at this old thread and know that i almost certainly left a comment in it. although ive created and left behind hundreds of accounts in the meantime. i first got on HN feb 2015 when i read an article about “famed god” getting arrested in las vegas… his shirt had “hack the world” written on it and when i googled “hack the world famed god,” not knowing about the movie reference, it gave me a HN thread about the incident. and then HN became my home for almost ten years… i didnt have facebook or instagram or vine. i literally just spent all my time on HN. now that the displacement of programmers by AI has begun, somehow my interest has waned.

at the time, the murder for hire accusations seemed legitimate and they still do today. hopefully they charge him with attempted murder if the statute of limitations isnt up.

>>smeege+QA1
It was dismissed with prejudice, and can’t be tried again:

https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Doc_14_Dismi...

>>echoan+XB1
>It was dismissed with prejudice, and can’t be tried again

But there were in total six murder-for-hire allegations against Ross Ulbricht. That Maryland case in your link [0] was only one of them.

That Maryland one was also a case in which Carl Force, a corrupt federal agent, was deeply involved. The New York trial which incarcerated Ulbricht avoided considering that single allegation, specifically because of the corrupt agent's involvement. [1]

(Confusingly, there were also six allegations of drug-related deaths. These were completely unrelated with the six murder allegations.)

It's notable that, in that Maryland document you linked, the US Attorney could have moved to dismiss the charge without prejudice, meaning that it could be retried, but he chose not to do that.

But he then continues, to say, without explaining why, that Ulbricht was already serving a life sentence which had been affirmed on appeal in New York. The implication is that the US Attorney is hinting that there's no point ever pursuing the 'attempted murder' angle, because Ulbricht is already locked up for life (Narrator: he was wrong).

Here's a summary

* One murder-for-hire allegation (Maryland): Indicted, but dismissed with prejudice by US Attorney

* Five murder-for-hire allegations (New York): Not indicted/charged, not decided by jury, but included in sentencing decision

* Six drug-related death allegations (New York): Not indicted/charged, not decided by jury, but included in sentencing decision

*

What I understand is that the New York jury was allowed to know about the attempted murder-for-hire and the drug-related death claims, but not about the corrupt federal agents.

The murder-for-hire allegations, meanwhile, were allowed to influence his sentencing (and the rejection of his appeal) due to "a preponderance of evidence" as decided by the judge, which would not be sufficient grounds for criminal convictions such as murder, which require evidence "beyond reasonable doubt".

This was not justice's finest hour.

*

[0] Maryland dismissal: https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Doc_14_Dismi...

[1] New York's appeal rejection decision: https://web.archive.org/web/20221213001237/https://pdfserver...