Either way enough relatives of deceased drug abusers testified at sentencing, and enough heartless chat logs of DPR's were introduced as evidence, to rather eviscerate the idea that Silk Road was completely "victimless".
By that logic relatives of deceased drunk-driving victims should be testifying against bars and liquor store proprietors as well.
I think while most expected this kind of outcome, the comments coming out in support are really a round-about kind of way of expressing various posters underlying opinion about U.S. drug laws and policies as ridiculous, draconian, counter-productive and harmful.
Uh, should I be the one to tell you that such relatives often do that very thing?
But at least bars and liquor stores don't often go about torturing and murdering their employees, so at least they have that going for them.
http://freeross.org/the-case-the-goal-and-why-this-matters-2...
Or if you don't grep, you could just start from the beginning; the judge essentially leads off with the murder-for-hire subplot right from the beginning of her ruling.
As mentioned by dragonwriter, this murder-for-hire scheme was an overt act charged as part of Count One of the indictment (p5)
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy/...