I can't say I know every detail of the case but I don't recall anyone getting killed or even hurt by Mr. Ulbricht so in my mind the punishment does not fit the crime. IMHO the death penalty should be off the table completely (go Nebraska!) and life in prison reserved for only violent offenders. You can argue that he enabled people to harm themselves but I think that's stretching it. If people want to take drugs, even take too much drugs their going to get it somewhere. If drugs were legal and treatment of abuse the focus instead of punishment Silk Road wouldn't have existed in the first place.
The prosecution brought this up at trial but he was not charged or convicted of this in the criminal trial.
Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
But let's talk about this alleged hitman situation. Didn't the police come up with the idea and create the situation where a third of a million dollars appeared to have been stolen and a volunteer appeared to defect with information and a threat to bring down the organization?
What exactly does count as coercion? If the police were to make your incentives work out a certain way - let's say they were aware that a non-call-girl was in dire straights was potentially willing to accept money for a personal night, they freeze her bank account and provide a good looking and safe opportunity with a load of cash to do it - would that count as compulsion?
Or is it just by appeal to words that counts as compulsion?
How can a court decide what you would have done otherwise?
It seems like a pretty difficult area of law - and one that the defendant could argue?
For the record I do not support trafficking of drugs and illegal materials, nor calling of hit men: but I do want to make sure that the tools to get a conviction do not further enshrine precedents that have fascistic qualities to them - e.g. parallel construction, entrapment, others.
> Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
" Yes. I went to Georgetown Law, where I was an editor of the American Criminal Law Review. I started out defending juveniles in D.C., then was a prosecutor with the Manhattan D.A.’s office for about 9.5 years, first in the Special Narcotics office and then in the Rackets bureau. I’ve been doing mostly criminal defense since then, both white-collar and street crime, federal and state. "