Didn't find a link here to this, thought you guys might appreciate. On another note does this sub not take link posts? only self.text posts?
Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence
Didn't find a link here to this, thought you guys might appreciate. On another note does this sub not take link posts? only self.text posts?
[29 Points] burningmaggot:
[7 Points] ShulginsCat:
Objections to harm reduction argument (users):
The impact of heroin, crack, and meth sold in the Bronx [...] are no better for our society than those drugs that were sold through Silk Road. When those drugs arrive it is the same drugs.
Many drugs on Silk Road were highly addictive. Many have harmful side effects. Many people have unpredictable reaction. Repeated use of highly addictive drugs leads to a host of clear social costs, costs that we all pay: People lose the ability to function, they lose their jobs, they lose their income, they lose their ability to have meaningful relationships and sustain those relationships [...]
Objections to harm reduction argument (vendors):
[Silk Road] shows drugs made available in wholesale quantities; kilos of this, kilos of that. So, it is not just hand-to-hand. All right? So, those drug dealers, when they go out, where is the hand-to-hand harm reduction for them? And drug dealers are targets of violence. So, when they get their express mail package in the mail and it is sitting in their apartment, are they not the targets of somebody coming in? Does the mailman not show that he is delivering a package to John Doe?
Objections to harm reduction argument (global drug trafficking):
Let's take Afghanistan or Mexico as the place for poppies for heroin. As we know, there is all kinds of violence in terms of the production of drugs and Silk Road can't reduce that violence because it is not involved in that part of the chain. But, when it expands the market it is expanding the demand on that part of the chain and it is a step in the chain. [...] When you have a demand-expanding operation such as Silk Road there is more demand for [drugs] and there is going to be whatever violence that results.
Assassination payments:
When he commissioned the hit on other of what he thought was one person, Tony76, he learned that Tony76 was [...] with three other individuals. Ulbricht then agreed and paid for a hit on all four of them. He commissioned the hit without regard to who they were, to the fact that they had a right to life [...] he never expressed any concern for them at all.
Ulbricht is personally responsible:
[Ulbricht] was the leader and without the rules that he implemented and oversaw and directed others to oversee on his behalf, this would not have been possible. So, he was, by all accounts, the leader.
You spent several years very carefully planning the site and designing carefully considered methods of avoiding legal detection both for yourself, for your vendors, and for your customers, and you sought in all of these ways to put yourself above the law.
It is also notable that the reasons that you started Silk Road were philosophical and I don't know that it is a philosophy left behind. [...] I don't know that you believe you hurt a lot of people. I don't think you know that you hurt many.
Sentencing:
This is a case in which general deterrence plays a particularly important role. […] What you did was unprecedented and in breaking that ground as the first person you sit here as the defendant now today having to pay the consequences for that.
Mr. Ulbricht, it is my judgment delivered here, now, on behalf of our country, that on Counts Two and Four you are sentenced to a period of life imprisonment [...] In the federal system there is no parole and you shall serve your life in prison.
[2 Points] crondom90:
Thanks for sharing
[2 Points] None:
[deleted]
[1 Points] Spa__ce:
As much as i wanted to hate her words once i got to about here:
“No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court,” she said. “It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did.”
I realized that she is probably somehwhat justified. Not in the context of the outcome being just but in the context of her as a judge.
[1 Points] UDGHT:
Can some one please explain to me why if he was not convicted of the murder for hire charges are they apart of his PSR and the base offense level? If I understand correctly they where not even mentioned during his trial and where dropped or vacated?
[-1 Points] QLDGreat:
She cited his (DoctorX) sale of expired fentanyl patches, a narcotic pain reliever, and his advice to a user who wanted to take MDMA to abandon his antidepressants beforehand.
I haven't read the full transcript, and probably won't, but if this is true it definitely changes my opinion of him. That's incredibly reckless behaviour.
"So, it wasn't a world without restriction. It wasn't a world of ultimate freedom. It was a world of laws that you created, they were your laws. It is fictional to think of Silk Road as some place of freedom"
"So, it isnt a world without restriction. It isn't a world of ultimate freedom. It is a world of laws that legislators created, they are their laws. It is fictional to think of Our country as some place of freedom.”
Fixed.