I don't see how that should change anyone's opinion on whether the sentence was deserved. Whether it was legally/procedurally correct, sure. Whether he didn't get the day in court he should have had, sure. But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed, what he deserves is a long prison sentence, and whether that's imposed by a court doing things properly, a court doing things improperly, or a vigilante kidnapper isn't really here or there on that point.
(The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)
> But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed
If there was enough evidence to demonstrate that he attempted to murder someone, why wasn't he charged and convicted of it?
Also, 2 of the DEA agents involved in his investigation were convicted of fraud in relation to the case.
I do believe he probably did attempt to have someone killed, but I'm far from certain of it, and think it should have no bearing on the case if there's not enough evidence to convict him.
> If there was enough evidence to demonstrate that he attempted to murder someone, why wasn't he charged and convicted of it?
Wikipedia suggests this was because he was already sentenced to double life imprisonment. Clearly prosecutors should not waste time pursuing charges that won't really impact a criminal's status, do you disagree?
If they don't "waste time pursuing charges that won't really impact" the sentence then the unproven allegations should not be allowed to impact the sentence. You can't have it both ways.
What a lot of people are overlooking is that there were two separate indictments in two separate courts with two separate prosecution teams.
In one indictment, in a New York federal court, he was charged with several crimes, but not murder-for-hire. In the other indictment, in a Maryland federal court, he was charged just with murder-for-hire.
The case in New York went to trial first. The murder-for-hire evidence was introduced in that court as part of trying to prove some of the elements of the other charges.
For example to prove a charge of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise one of the elements is that the person occupied "a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management". Evidence that a person is trying to hire hitmen to protect the enterprise is evidence that they occupy such a role.
After the convictions and sentencing in the New York trial were upheld on appeal, the prosecutors in Maryland dropped their case because he was then in jail, for life, with no possibility of parole. They said it was a better use of resources to focus on cases where justice had not yet been served.
> What a lot of people are overlooking is that there were two separate indictments in two separate courts with two separate prosecution teams.
They're not overlooking this, they're criticizing it.
Suppose you have to prove that someone occupied "a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management" so you introduce several pieces of evidence to try to prove it, one of them is some sketchy murder for hire allegations from a low-credibility source. The jury then convicts on the conspiracy charge without indicating whether they believed the murder for hire claim was proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Should you now use the murder for hire claim to determine sentencing for the conspiracy charge? No, that's crazy, it's a much more serious crime and they should have to charge and prove that as a separate count if they want it to affect the penalty.
The issue is that the law enforcement agent investigating the allegation had serious credibility issues, but the same agent had access to the laptop, so now you have a chain of custody problem. How much of the chat logs are real and how much of them are made up by this guy who was convicted for extorting Ulbricht?
In particular, the chat logs allegedly contain multiple separate instances of murder for hire, but then the claim that Ulbricht had already been sentenced to life without parole as the reason these claims were never prosecuted doesn't make sense, because a conspiracy to commit murder has multiple parties, so where are the murder prosecutions of these alleged contract killers and co-conspirators?
They're unproven allegations because "proven allegations" mean something specific, i.e. that it was charged as a count and the jury rendered a verdict of guilty. This is especially important when it's not at all clear they could have proven it as a separate count, because those allegations were tainted by significant law enforcement credibility issues.
This might be a case of conflict of interest though, as saying instead that Ulbricht did ask him to kill someone could worsen the legal position of the alleged hitman as well, depending on the specific circumstances of the case.
Strange because it reminds me of some story where an innocent man was framed for murder and a compassionate relative of the murder victim argued for their release and the innocent man went on to live a productive and happy life.
> But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed,
It’s my understanding in the US that you are innocent until proven guilty, right? Therefore, he is indeed innocent of those crimes, since he was not proven guilty. Unless I’m missing something on how the US justice system works.
Their comment wasn’t about what was legally right. I thought the part where they said something like “regardless of whether it is by courts doing things properly, by courts doing things improperly, or by some vigilante” made that clear enough?
Whether someone morally deserves a punishment for a crime depends on whether they actually did it, not on whether they are considered innocent in the eyes of the law.
Of course, I don’t generally support vigilantism , so I don’t think people should try to make other people get what they think the other people deserve as punishment. But, that doesn’t mean that people can’t deserve worse than the law prescribes, just that people shouldn’t like, try to deliver what they think the deserts are.
You say the rule of law is important, but also we should impose extra-legal long sentences even if the rule of law doesn't allow us to? How do you reconcile this perspective?
The rule of law says innocent until proven guilty.
The reason they didn't go after him for murder for hire allegations isn't because they felt bad for him or that they didn't want to waste tax payer's money.
The reason they didn't go after him for 'murder for hire' was that they knew there was no merit in it.
They did go after him for "murder for hire"; the murders were part of his conspiracy predicates, and evidence for them was introduced. This stuff about him not being taken all the way through a case charged on murder-for-hire, after receiving a life sentence in a case where those murders were part of the case, is just message board jazz hands.
>case where those murders were part of the case, is just message board jazz hands.
you're trying to look like you don't understand or aren't aware that jury didn't convict him of murder-for-hire.
He chose a trial by jury, not by a judge. Nevertheless the judge herself decided that he is guilty of the murder-for-hire, and additionally the judge used significantly lower standard than required for conviction.
Feel free to use the search bar to see what's been written (including by me) in the zillion discussions we've had on this case in the past. Again: primary source documentation of what happened in that trial is right there for you to read; you're just a Google search away from it.
(The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)