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.
You don't get to kill other people to cover up your own crimes, period. Self-defense is the only possible justification, and that requires an imminent threat to his life (or at least grievous bodily injury). Threats to incriminate you don't count for anything.
Please refer to the guide, it explains all of these myths. If you think things work some other way, cite law to the contrary.
Can you be specific about which webcomic had law enforcement blackmailing someone? I didn't see one that covers our case there.
> 'because an innocent person would say "no".'
Doesn't that imply that all entrapment is legal? And is it even true? People can be blackmailed for things they haven't done and even easily give false confessions of guilt...
Thanks for the conversation Natsu. I don't think you're the legal expert I was hoping would be in this thread. Again thank you for sharing your opinion.
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Can the police give you the idea to do something bad?
YES - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=646
You're supposed to refuse.
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Can the police commit crimes along with you?
YES - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=649
There are limits, though, to what sort of crimes, explained in the guide. Assuming they haven't overstepped those bounds, they're not in trouble, and you are. Not only that, but YOU can even get charged for the crimes they did if you were both members of the same criminal conspiracy.
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If you're under duress, is it okay to kill someone to save your own life?
NO - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=813
It would be good to go back to review the necessity section, as well - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=722
EDIT: Fixed a mistake.
None of these cover the scenario. They do not have to do with whether using coercion (let's say the leverage in the third example) counts as entrapment if done by the police.
The answer is yes.
You are continuing to try to use web comics to argue a strawman.
They are interesting web comics, for sure.
Whether it is okay or not to kill someone if you are under duress is tangential to whether it counts as entrapment.
Both can be true. It can not be okay - illegal - AND be entrapment on the part of the police.
The argument is that it was entrapment.
The argument was not about whether hiring a hitman would be okay or not.
Please, if you feel like getting the last word in, for the sake of readers who stumble onto this, cover the issue and not another straw man.
Further, this is all 1L stuff (i.e. the basics). DRP's lawyers know all this stuff. And yet, as far as I can see, they didn't even try this argument. There's only one reason a lawyer doesn't raise an argument that would get their client off the hook: because it's bogus. (Raising bogus arguments in court is a bad idea... it wastes everyone's time and angers the judge, do it enough and you can get sanctioned.)
And they did cover the hitman issue--they most certainly did try to suppress the evidence that he hired a hitman (just not with arguments over entrapment). You can read more here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
But not once did they say 'entrap'. You seem to be trying to argue that DPR wasn't predisposed to hiring hitmen before the cops got there, but that the cops convinced him that it was his only option.
I've covered why that doesn't cut it: the police CAN join your conspiracy, they CAN lie to you, they CAN give you the means (and the idea!) to commit the crime, and he DID have other options (he doesn't have to like them). Each of those cuts out elements of his defense, leaving nothing.
So the case you have to make is that the police overcame his resistance to hiring a hitman, but the chat logs given never show him saying "no, I don't want to do this" they show him as eager to make use of this "solution."
To establish a claim of entrapment, you have to show that he resisted the idea and that the police overcame this resistance. From there, courts may follow one of two approaches: deciding whether this defendant had been predisposed to commit the crime or whether this approach would have caused any law-abiding citizen to commit the crime.
I've been pointing to the latter approach, as I think it's more productive to take an objective approach than a subjective one. Were a law-abiding citizen in DPR's shoes, they would NOT have hired the hitman. A law-abiding citizen hit by this would have turned to the police for protection from the blackmail, not to a hitman.
The discussion of necessity and duress is relevant to whether he had "other options." Both of those are arguments that one does not have other real options. Because both of those unqestionably fail, he had other options.
To establish entrapment, you have to prove that he had no way out and that they used this to overcome resistance. In the example of actual entrapment, we have someone shown as refusing to commit a crime for money, then agreeing only because someone's life is at stake and the papers aren't really important.
Nowhere have you cited any of the chat logs with him showing resistance to hiring a hitman (this is required!). And then you have to show them overcoming this resistance.
Maybe if you can show the police telling him that police protection is worthless or shooting down his ideas for avoiding hiring a hitman you could get somewhere, but... no such evidence is on offer.
Rather, all of the evidence points to the fact that he was predisposed to commit this crime. From the legal brief cited above:
The next day, Ulbricht told another coconspirator, CC-2, about the theft. (Id.) Ulbricht expressed surprise that the Employee had stolen from him given that he had a copy of the Employee’s driver’s license. (Id. at 6-7.) Later in the conversation, Ulbricht and CC-2 discussed the possibility that the Employee was cooperating with law enforcement, and CC-2 remarked:
So if you want to argue this, take facts cited from court papers (e.g. papers filed by DPR's lawyers), then fit those to the elements of entrapment. Show me from the chat logs or similar sources where he exhibited resistance to the idea, then show me how the police convinced him to give up that resistance.
Because that's how you establish entrapment.