I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.
The charge was dropped, but the court did hold a hearing on it when deciding on sentencing. They heard the evidence for and against and ruled by a preponderance of the evidence that he did in fact do it.
Separate courts. He was indicted and tried for all the non-murder stuff in a New York federal court. He was indicted separately in a Maryland federal court on a murder-for-hire charge.
The New York court convicted him, and then considered the murder-for-hire allegations when determining his sentence. They found them true by a preponderance of the evidence and and that was a factor in his sentence to life without parole. He appealed, and the Second Circuit upheld the sentence.
The prosecutors in Maryland then dropped the murder-for-hire charge because there was no point. They said this would allow them to direct their resources to other other cases where justice had not yet been served.
Ironically, he was only pardoned for drug related crimes, so he could still be charged with murder related ones if they were not dropped with prejudice (i didn't look)
This is all AFAIK, they haven't released the text broadly yet, but his lawyers/etc say he was pardoned for crimes related to drugs.
Even what people call a 'full and unconditional' pardon is usually targeted at something specific, not like "a pardon for anything you may have ever done, anywhere, anytime' which people seem to think it means sometimes.
It's more of a legal term of art to describe pardons that erase convictions, restore rights, etc.
Rather than clemency which, say, commutes your sentence but leaves your conviction intact.
One issue with any potential trial for murder-for-hire is that the allegation as presented in the Maryland indictment has two problematic witnesses: DEA agent Carl Force who acted as the hitman, now in prison for embezzling cryptocurrency from the Silk Road case, and Curtis Green, the would-be victim in this case, who has previously insisted that Ulbricht was innocent of plotting his murder (and was also recently imprisoned for cocaine distribution last year, although I don't think that would be too relevant). Maybe the other allegations might have more meat on the bone, but they didn't make it on to any indictment.
The judge wrote at sentencing the murder for hire 'counted' as an element of the criminal enterprise. So if he was pardoned for his crimes that includes the murder for hire per the judgement of his case.
So depending on the pardon text and interpretation, he may or may not be chargeable with this statute still federally.
I agree this has zero effect on charging him at the state level, and most states do not have statute of limitations on these types of crimes (or they are very long)
> so he could still be charged with murder related ones if they were not dropped with prejudice
They were dismissed with prejudice.
> “We are pleased that the prosecutors in the District of Maryland, after almost five years, have dismissed their indictment against Ross. Holding this over Ross’ head, without taking it to trial where he could defend himself, has been very damaging to Ross and his case, especially because it contained the only charge of murder-for-hire. Of course, this charge was never proven or convicted, but was very effective in smearing Ross’s reputation and hurting him in the legal process”.
> She said, “We had some good news recently. The indictment and superseding indictment against Ross in the District of Maryland were dismissed ‘with prejudice,’ meaning they can never be re-filed. This is especially good because those indictments contained the only charge ever made that Ross engaged in murder-for-hire. This was a serious allegation that Ross denies. It was never prosecuted or ruled on by a jury but was trumpeted by the government and the media as if it were proven fact”.
> Following his arrest in 2013, prosecutors also alleged that he planned murder-for-hire although, curiously, he was never charged or prosecuted for it at trial (and the allegations were dismissed with prejudice by a U.S. District Judge in 2018).
> The allegations were never charged at trial, never proven, never submitted to, or ruled on by, a jury, and eventually dismissed with prejudice. Ross consistently denied the allegations (which relied on anonymous online chats never proven to have been authored by him) and those who know him never believed them. The only alleged victim ever identified, Curtis Green, is a fervent supporter of Ross’s clemency.
Most recent pardons have been announced in documents labeled "Executive Grant of Clemency", so I don't think "clemency" and "pardons" are as distinct as you're saying.
And while I know you said "usually", I can't help but note that Hunter Biden was pardoned for any federal thing he may have done, anywhere, anytime in the last 10 years. Some of the last-minute pardons were pretty broad as well.
Fascinating. It is news to me that a federal court can consider the evidence for crimes not proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal sentencing. Learn something new every day.
Since he was sentenced federally, he'd be under the federal sentencing guidelines, but I imagine those are pretty harsh around the money laundering and drug trafficking (since they're tuned to provide a hammer to wield against mostly narco-enterprises). I suppose the additional preponderance of evidence gave the judge justification to push the sentence to the maximum allowed in the category?
It’s extremely common in for example diversion cases and others, where the defendant has to stipulate that they are agreeable to things being presented as in charging documents and evaluated based on preponderance by a court, not by a jury and not subject to principles of reasonable doubt.
> The New York court convicted him, and then considered the murder-for-hire allegations when determining his sentence. They found them true by a preponderance of the evidence and and that was a factor in his sentence to life without parole.
How is that not a massive violation of due process? Imagine you are at trial for something and get convicted. Then during the sentencing, some other unrelated case's evidence gets used by the Judge which was never introduced during trial and defendant never had any opportunity to defend or cross-examine. Judge uses that to sentence you to 2+ life sentences. After that, the other unrelated case gets dismissed WITH prejudice. Huh??? So the evidence which got used to sentence you was never ever cross-examined or tested in court. "preponderance of the evidence" is not what's used in criminal trials but just because it was introduced in sentencing, it's somehow okay?
Though an article by CBS (transcript is an interview) has this:
“THE HUNT FOR DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS
In 2011 there was a new bad guy in cyberspace behind the website Silk Road. He oversaw more than $200 million in illegal transactions on the dark web, involving the sale of drugs, weapons and illicit services such as computer hacking. Even murders for hire were discussed on the site.”
“Milan Patel: We saw murder-for-hire postings, hacking-for-hire postings, which was, "hey, pay me two bitcoin, and I'll hack into your ex-wife or ex-husband's email account." … and I suspect people were using it because it made a lot of sense. It was totally anonymous. And you could never trace it back to the person who asked for it.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ross-ulbricht-dread-pirate-...
It stands to reason that given criminals buying and selling drugs online that the adjacent work of hacking or even murder for hire would be sought or facilitated given the fact that folks on the platform thought they were anonymous as they were transacting in bitcoin.
So someone should call the FBIs bluff and given this pardon either Ross himself or one of you — his fans — could go spin up a server and restart silk road. Trump’s basically saying it’s legal. As he’s got the power to enforce or not enforce the laws this pardon basically is saying start selling drugs online. Let your libertarian freak flag fly.
This. Evidence that isn't strong enough to criminally convict can be used for other purposes (e.g. sentencing, knowledge/intent, civil forfeiture, civil damages etc).
(see OJ Simpson paying money damages for a crime he was acquitted of)
Wonder if he can be charged with that now? Was there anything in the pardon related to this? AFAIK there is no time limit on bringing charges related to murder?
According to Wikipedia[1], he was convicted of charges related to hacking, narcotics, money laundering, and more.
But during the trial, evidence was presented that he made murder-for-hire payments, the court found that he did by a preponderance of evidence, and the court took this into account when sentencing him.
So, he wasn't convicted of it, but it is part of the reason he was sent to jail for a very long time.
It was not entrapment. There is mention of undercover purchases and a controlled delivery by law enforcement, but these are not entrapment. Most of the evidence came from his own laptop.
It was entrapment because federal agents posing as crime bosses were threatening Ross that if he didn't hire the hitman there would be serious consequences. He was manipulated and forced into the position he was in.
This is not necessarily true. In Burdick v. United States it does say "an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it" but there is debate about whether it is binding of not.
Apparently, there is something in Lorance v. Commandant, U.S. Disciplinary Barracks that indicates that accepting a pardon does not imply guilt, but I am not very knowledge on that.
Yes the FBI had root or admin access to the Silk Road system and could have very easily changed or otherwise affected logs/record IDs that the technical case rested on. Two of the FBI agents on the case were later punished for corruption on the case.
The judge factored it into the sentencing, though. He likely did actually try to hire a contract killer - twice. In both cases he sincerely believed the murders were successfully committed, and he sent a lot of money to the assassins after being sent (doctored) "proof" of their killings.
I think it's fair to say judges shouldn't factor non-charged allegations into sentencing, but I think he's at least morally culpable, here, and should at the very least be expected to now show public contrition for repeatedly trying to murder people drug kingpin-style.
I doubt he will ever admit it, but now that he's free I still would like it. I don't care about people enabling drug sales but I do care about people with a God complex who feel entitled to end the lives of those they oppose (in one case because he thought someone stole from him, and another because he thought they would dox him).
A judge and system who would give him 2 life sentences for this should not be trusted when he also factored in things which he wasn't charged and convicted of.
It is common that several outcomes are subject - with the defendants specific agreement - to be evaluated by a court on preponderance, not a jury. This was not judicial malpractice.
I am sorry but there's no way giving him more than 2 life sentences has any justification whatsoever. Even the people who actually sold drugs on his site got out in 2 years. And the person who hired someone for hitman also only got 6 years. This is exactly the type of case where pardon makes 100% sense.
> Even the people who actually sold drugs on his site got out in 2 years.
And Ross made millions from those people selling drugs on his site. Quite possibly more than any person selling drugs on his site.
And attempted to hire hitmen to prevent anyone stopping it. Not even as a potential "crime of passion", but solely to protect his money train.
And there's this whole false narrative of "youthful indiscretions". He didn't start building the site til he was 28 and was mostly running it in his early 30s.
What would give you a hint that attempted murder conviction would prevent his pardon? Trump pardoned over a thousand attempted murdered already this week.
I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.