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.
There are a lot of misconceptions about what is or is not entrapment. A lot of things like lying about not being a cop when under cover, putting out a bait car, or just watching you commit a crime without warning you it was a crime are not entrapment and the reason why is explained in the guide.
It's only entrapment when they do something to overcome some resistance you put up to committing the crime. So unless you can show that they somehow changed your mind, the entrapment defense won't work.
Sure, the thief wouldn't have stolen the bait car if they knew it was a bait car, but the question is whether they would have stolen any car.
It seems to me that DPR came up with murder as the 'solution' to this problem, even if we claim that the problem itself was entirely manufactured.
Entrapment defenses are only supposed to prevent innocent people from being coerced by police into committing a new crime, not to provide a get out of jail free card to criminals who were somehow fooled by the police.
So the real question is not whether the police gave him a reason to hire a hitman, it's whether he ever would have hired an assassin at all.
Similar searches for the legal distinction between extortion and blackmail consider blackmail a form of coercion.
Given (A) that blackmail is coercion (psychological pressure), and (B) coercing someone into committing a crime is entrapment. Would (A) and (B) then not imply that (C) blackmailing should count as entrapment?
DPR did not come up with a hitman as a solution. Law enforcement made the suggestion. They did not use the words, just had their fake identity offer to take care of the situation.
The overarching point here to protect people who weren't committing crimes from being dragged into them ("corrupted") and the rules are set up to avoid protecting criminals who were merely fooled by the police into exposing their criminal nature.
Nobody made him hire a hitman. They gave him a reason to, but they didn't make him do it. If he needed protection from a blackmailer, he could have turned himself in as well as the blackmailer.
This. If he hadn't created a multi-million dollar drug empire, there would've been no blackmail. Therefore, the fact that he had to resort to murder to stop the blackmail is no defense at all.
"It's his own fault he couldn't go to the police for help with the blackmail, so the court cannot reasonably excuse him for not doing so."
That's not how blackmail works within the legal system.