zlacker

>>uptown+(OP)
Murderers get less than that. We are truly an interesting society, aren't we - somehow kids doing LSD, a mostly harmless substance, is causing us more harm, as a society, than, say, violence?

>>Popsic+51
Ulbricht was also convicted of hiring a hitman.

edit: this is something that vice news [0] reported that is apparently wrong.

> But despite these setbacks, Ulbricht was ultimately convicted in February on a raft of charges, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, and hiring assassins to take out members of Silk Road.

[0]: https://news.vice.com/article/ross-ulbricht-convicted-master...

>>collin+l1
No, he wasn't. He was never even charged with that; the story of one attempt to hire a hitman was admitted into the trial as evidence that he was running the Silk Road and knew what he was doing, but that was never one of the actual charges against him.

>>amyjes+x1
The prosecution sentencing memo rebuts this argument, pointing out that Ulbricht's attempts to procure murder for hire were explicit factual components of one of the charges he faced.

Ulbricht's argument to the effect that he wasn't properly charged with the murder-for-hire scheme was addressed in detail by the court:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...

>>tptace+L1
That court opinion describes a list of alleged chats that the Feds planned to introduce as evidence. It does not say the court accepted that evidence as true in the form of a finding of fact. (Put another way, that document does not say what you says it does, and we all know there are two sides to every story.)

It seems to me that if the Feds were confident about their murder-for-hire claim, they would have charged Ulbricht accordingly. That they chose not to do so indicates they were less than confident, and we should draw our conclusions accordingly.

For all I know he may well have been involved in murder for hire; I haven't paid close enough attention to the case to have an opinion. But I've followed too many hacker cases to accept unrebutted DOJ allegations as gospel truth.