Ross Ulbricht Found Guilty On All 7 Counts In Silk Road Trial 257
blottsie writes Ross Ulbricht was convicted on Wednesday of running Silk Road, a Dark Net black market that became over a $100 million Internet phenomenon before Ulbricht's 2013 arrest. Ulbricht was found guilty on all seven felony charges he faced, including drug trafficking, continuing a criminal enterprise, hacking, money laundering, and fraud with identification documents. He faces up to life in prison for these convictions.
If he actually did all that... (Score:2, Redundant)
...then he deserves his punishment.
I'm sure there will be hundreds of comments here about it, but since none of us were at the trial, well really never know.
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I wonder if the nature of this trial and conviction will work against him even more in the murder-for-hire trial he's to face next...
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Yup, and as mentioned most of us won't even bother reading the transcript to know the difference.
That's why injustice exists. Not because evil exists, but because apathy does.
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is the public supposed to read the transcripts of every criminal trial?
Re:If he actually did all that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously. RoknrolZombie makes a ridiculous point. If justice meant every citizen had to read every court transcript then justice would be impossible.
Instead, we hire professionals to do that work for us. We call them "judges". To be extra super careful, instead of just having one judge we have several layers of judges who can overrule findings. The system is open to critique on the details but I can't imagine a fundamentally different system that would be better.
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Seriously. RoknrolZombie makes a ridiculous point. If justice meant every citizen had to read every court transcript then justice would be impossible.
Instead, we hire professionals to do that work for us. We call them "judges".
Or we hire jurors and pay them each $9 per diem.
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No, but it's a reasonable prerequisite for those who are expressing strong opinions about the outcome.
Re: If he actually did all that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Opinions about the outcome don't matter. Due process doesn't allow for crowd sourced judgments. The legal procedure is well established and time-tested.
The guy is guilty as charged. That's not open to opinion and not reversible by public vote.
There are appeal process, other until then, let be written, so let it be done.
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Yes they do. For a stable society, the public at large must believe that trials are decided justly.
Re: If he actually did all that... (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't have a "justice system."
We have a "legal system." Just because the law was followed does not mean justice was done.
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Justice was done because the law was followed.
If you are aware of evidence to the contrary, you need to step forward and be heard.
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The legal system is fucked up. While we probably shouldn't throw people in jail based on public opinion based on one-sided news reports we need to ensure the legal system actually provides for a fair trial. That's not happening in ANY case right now.
"The federal guilty plea rate has risen from 83% in 1983 to 96% in 2009,[24] a rise attributed largely to the Sentencing Guidelines." - Federal guilty pleas and trial rates, U.S. Sentencing Commission
Where there may have been some resemblance of fairness judges
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is the public supposed to read the transcripts of every criminal trial?
No, but if more of the public would refuse to find people guilty on drug charges, it would certainly help. I don't need to read a transcript to know that I wouldn't convict Ulbricht, or anyone else, of the charges brought against him.
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The Triumph of Evil (Score:2)
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Attributed (questionably) to Edmund Burke [wikiquote.org].
Re: The Triumph of Evil (Score:2)
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button.
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I was about to comment on the woosh that just flew over your head, but then I decided it was too much trouble.
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I was about to comment on the woosh that just flew over your head, but then I decided it was too much trouble.
Thi...
Oh fuck it.
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That's why injustice exists. Not because evil exists, but because apathy does.
Build on that thought......go out and help a homeless person today. You don't have to be apathetic just because everyone else is.
Re: If he actually did all that... (Score:3)
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This can be said about every convict with a long sentence, can it not?
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Yeah but thats true for every conviction ever. Despite that, the evidence seems pretty damning with this case.
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the FBI guy did catch him in the library at a computer with the silk road admin page on the screen
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...and he had the key used to sign the Dread Pirate Roberts emails on his computer.. ...and they were able to trace many millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin transactions to his personal Bitcoin acct.
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It's a good thing he used Bitcoin then, with the public audit record in the block chain.
Traditional money laundering with cash would make it almost impossible to trace.
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Probably. All he was doing was running bit torrent. He had an open port on his laptop! The feds used that to hack the computer and plant the private keys to the silk road's bitcoin wallet, as well as the mastermind's criminal diary and accounting records. And then made the silk road page come up and log in.
Then they pounced.
Open ports. Not even once.
Spaghetti on a slick wall fails to stick (Score:5, Interesting)
indeed, assuming he was guilty, and the jury thought so. Press accounts pretty damning and red handed in the arrest. then it seems like those charges omitted what Id consider the most heinous crime: soliciting the murder of 5 people.
I loved his lawyers theory that the Mt Gox mogul was really the mastermind. That would have been such a wickedly cool story. Since the FBI seized the assets of Silk Road about the same time Mt Gox had some liquidity problems it even seemed failntly plausible. I'd love to hear what the jury made of that piece of spaghetti on the wall.
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It was a simple matter for me, with just public information and a couple hours of coding, to trace 20% of Ulbricht’s stash as coming directly from Silk Road. It turns out that the wallet.dat files were able to trace many more.
The biggest question not answered in the trial is how the servers were found. The defense didn't challenge on that point (no one knows why).
Re:Spaghetti on a slick wall fails to stick (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest question not answered in the trial is how the servers were found. The defense didn't challenge on that point (no one knows why).
The answer to many questions about the defense strategy during the trial seem to be that either Ulbricht or his attorney or both thought they were engaged in an internet debate and not a criminal trial. His lawyer repeatedly failed to follow proper procedure during the trial that every trial lawyer knows, and used legal strategies that weirdly precluded them from offering certain lines of defense. For example, a critical defense assertion seems to have been that many of the pieces of evidence the prosecution used against Ulbricht were not owned by him or not his property. By making that assertion, he couldn't simultaneously assert that his rights were violated when they were acquired because he claimed they were not his in the first place. When his lawyer tried to do so, he was explicitly told he couldn't do that, as if he didn't even know.
Its almost as if the defense believed that since the prosecution bears the burden of proof, anything that had *any* alternative explanation, no matter how unlikely or illogical, automatically prevented proof beyond reasonable doubt. Which is ridiculous. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of this strategy was forced upon defense counsel by Ulbricht himself. It looks from the outside less like something an (even incompetent) attorney would do, and more like someone used to internet board sparring would think should work.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that most of this strategy was forced upon defense counsel by Ulbricht himself. It looks from the outside less like something an (even incompetent) attorney would do, and more like someone used to internet board sparring would think should work.
That would explain some of the strange decisions they made, like this one where the judge [archive.org] gave him a note clearly telling him that the procedure was not a good one, giving him a second chance.
I guess he should have realized that people are rarely convinced by internet board sparring, even though both sides typically think they've won.
Re:Spaghetti on a slick wall fails to stick (Score:4, Informative)
I think the assertion is (and I'm not a lawyer, etc) that a defendant cannot suppress the evidence which was possibly obtained illegally if the defendant doesn't have standing to contest the search. If he says they're his servers, then he can contest how the servers were searched. If he says they are not his servers, then he has no standing and cannot prevent the evidence found on the servers from being used against him at trial.
Seems odd to me, though. I would think any improperly obtained evidence should be contestable. For instance, if his buddy's statement that he was behind Silk Road was coerced, that should be contestable. I'd like to hear a lawyer's opinion on the subject.
I'm sure there's plenty of loopholes for the prosecution with multiple 3 letter agencies involved as well as multiple nationalities. There's probably a clause that lets them do whatever they want if they suspect terrorist activity on/through Silk Road, too.
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These charges (drug trafficking, etc) were federal crimes, and this was the federal trial. The murder-for-hire case is still being built in Maryland courts.
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Re:If he actually did all that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Prohibition of (most) drugs: yes. Prohibition of crazy machine guns, child slavery (or any kind of slavery, really), murder-for-hire, etc... not so much. I'm all for a better, safer drug market, but the way to go is working to lift prohibitions on drugs that shouldn't be illegal, not this.
Re:If he actually did all that... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he did it, he's a hero. He should be celebrated as the next Jeff Bezos for innovating a new way to do commerce online. Making the black market a safter place is a good thing, prohibition is what's wrong.
\
Now you will just have to hire hit men on amazon prime. Dude, he tried to get 5 people killed. He's not a hero just because you think he stuck it to the man and sold you your drugs on line.
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If he did it, he's a hero. He should be celebrated as the next Jeff Bezos for innovating a new way to do commerce online. Making the black market a safter place is a good thing, prohibition is what's wrong.
\
Now you will just have to hire hit men on amazon prime. Dude, he tried to get 5 people killed. He's not a hero just because you think he stuck it to the man and sold you your drugs on line.
And the shipping was free.
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By your fucked-up logic, anyone who does something illegal in front of witnesses is simply defending himself if he hires someone to kill the witnesses.
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Wouldn't that mean letting Ulbricht mail-order all the drugs he wants whenever he wants? Because I'm pretty sure no private dungeons were involved in this case.
no attempted murder charges? (Score:2)
http://www.dailydot.com/crime/... [dailydot.com]
they were dropped
lack of evidence?
i haven't been following closely, does anyone know why those charges went away?
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Those charges were raised in a different state. They weren't in this trial, they could be another trial, but at this point I doubt they'll bother.
Re:no attempted murder charges? (Score:4, Informative)
i finally read TFA, you are correct:
they'll probably still try him
but indeed, it's rather pointless, with the other charges he's not getting out of prison regardless
Re:no attempted murder charges? (Score:5, Interesting)
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good point
Particularly since these are federal charges (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case where there's a state and a federal case, often the state will step aside and let the feds try theirs first and if they get the conviction, leave it with that. That is what happened with the loony who shot Gabby Giffords and others in Arizona. AZ had murder and attempted murder cases against him, but so did the federal government, since he killed a federal judge and tried to kill a congressman. AZ let the feds arrest and try him, so they incur the cost of imprisoning him in their facilities. He's away for life anyways, so it doesn't matter. In the event the federal case had failed, AZ could have then stepped in and moved forward on their charges.
Re:Particularly since these are federal charges (Score:4, Insightful)
You allude to one of the most disgusting loopholes in the US justice system, which is that double jeopardy does not apply across the federal/state boundary. So, yes, the feds can try you, you can be found innocent, and then the state gets another bite at the apple.
This is VERY uncommon, though, because both federal and state prosecutors typically will, as agency policy, NOT exercise this right, because it's so unfair to do that and so out-of-keeping with the spirit of the constitution. But there have been instances where they have done this. And it's disgusting.
No, it still does (Score:3)
These are separate charges. In the case I'm talking about the whacko killed a number of people, and injured more. Some of them were just ordinary civilians, and so it would be Arizona law that would cover it. However some of them were federal employees and federal law would cover it. So he could be tried for some of the crimes under state law, some of them under federal. No jeopardy problems with that.
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Ah, I misunderstood you.
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There are no indications that any murder took place, that the persons (excluding DPR) involved intended to murder someone or even that the person DPR wanted dead ever existed in the first place!
I guess Ross still could be tried for conspiracy to commit murder... The rest of those involved? Maybe tried for fraud.
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i apologize, it's in TFA, and i finally read it
he's being tried on murder-for-hire separately:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
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Sense you apologized, we'll let it slide. But if we find out you read another article you will be asked to leave.
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i only read half of your comment and then immediately started replying to you with insults, you rat butt
am i redeemed?
Terrible lawyering by the defense (Score:4, Interesting)
I was shocked at how bad Ulbricht's defense was. They threw out two theories, hoping to raise reasonable doubt, and both were trounced by the government's evidence. Even if Ulbricht had really sold the site shortly after creating it and then was invited back recently to be the fall guy- he's still guilty of the conspiracies he was charged with because he came back in an admin role.
I assume he picked his own lawyer and didn't have a public defender, but they were terrible. If you know you're going to court with a dog shit defense, just plead guilty and hope for leniency. Maybe the lawyer advised that and Ulbricht refused.
Re:Terrible lawyering by the defense (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sa... [forbes.com]
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i was on a murder trial jury
i would characterize the defense lawyers as having sold the accused on a harebrained defense strategy
when the evidence was overwhelming and unambiguous, and we quickly found him guilty
i wouldn't be surprised that the novelty of ulbricht's case excited some defense lawyers at some angles they wanted to explore, and ulbricht put faith in their excitement, to naught
(btw, from reading TFA, ulbricht still has additional murder-for-hire charges facing him at another trial)
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Well, I would
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usually you can cut a deal before a trial starts where you get a reduced sentence by admitting guilt and avoiding an unnecessary trial. going to trial is a gamble. for the prosecution and the defense
but if the evidence stacked against you is quite damning, it's a bad gamble with the odds highly against you. you should have settled beforehand
in the case i was on, the proof against the guy was airtight and clear. but the defense hinged upon his buddy's involvement mitigating his guilt ( i don't want to get in
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i got the distinct impression on the trial i was in the jury on that the lawyer was driving things
i can see how it can work the other way though like you describe
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A defense lawyer has to expect the prosecution to object to everything.
"The judge sustained some, but overruled most of the objections."
So it doesn't sound like those objections had much of an impact, other than being obnoxious.
"In the following weeks, the defense would attempt to call Steven M. Bellovin, a professor at Columbia University’s computer science department, to testify on—among other things—Linux kernel versions.
The judge ruled that they had not complied with the appropriate di
Read on the trial more (Score:2)
The prosecutors objected to everything (and the judge allowed) because the defense wanted to cross-examine prosecution witnesses on topics the prosecution had not brought up on direct examination.
The proper thing to do when you want to bring up new topics with prosecution witnesses is to also list them as witnesses for the defense, not lay out your defense case before it's your turn to do so.
And the defense tried to insert their experts at the last minute without presenting sufficient evidence that they wer
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I found this Ars article rather illuminating:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Specifically, this quote at the end:
Ulbricht received a fair trial. The judge was hard on the defense, but that is largely due to how the defense acted and their strange tactical decisions.
In one of the judge's orders (I believe the one excluding his expert witnesses), the Judge blasted the defense as having made a calculated risk - they didn't want to show their hand so that the prosecution couldn't show evidence to counter the defense strategy, so they waited until the last minute to add their experts to the trial. However, the prosecution saw some of this coming and dropped a t
Not necessiarly (Score:2)
As a defense lawyer you have to work with what you have, and sometimes you have jack and shit. My friend is a lawyer that worked for the public defender's office and of all his clients, there was only one who he wasn't sure of their guilt. So all he could do is see if the state made any procedural mistakes which could get the case dismissed (which they did sometimes) or try to talk the client in to taking a plea. If they wouldn't he'd have to go to trial with an already-lost case. He'd try his best, as both
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There was no hope for that in this case. Silk Road embarassed the state twice: once by going uncaught for years and the second time by proving the drug war rethoric is bollocks - after all, every single customer was functional enough to operate rather complex technological systems. So there was no way in Hell Ulbricht would ever walk free again.
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They were less trounced by the prosecution's evidence as they were not allowed to present much of it, or the jury was advised to ignore that evidence
What evidence would have been presented that would have changed the verdict? If all you have is "political ideas like the drug war is wrong," that's not going to cast reasonable doubt on anything.
Not to mention not one juror was very familiar with the internet; if you were charged with some internet related crime would you think that a jury of your peers should include people who know something about what you're charged with?
Defenders have plenty of ways to get rid of jurors that they don't like. If that really bothered the defense, they could have gotten rid of a single juror.
Up to life? (Score:3)
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And the other 6 convictions should be good enough to add at least another 50 years to that.
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Off topic: "Continuing Criminal Enterprise" would be a good name for a band.
"mandatory minimum" 20 years, minus 13% (Score:5, Interesting)
The statute specifies a mandatory minimum of 20 years:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc... [cornell.edu]
Good time takes 13% off of that.
However, mandatory minimums aren't always so mandatory. Due to waiting until the last minute to handle some paperwork, I once went to jail for driving without a license. That had a mandatory minimum sentence of three days in jail. I was picked up Monday night and got out first thing Tuesday morning - so about 10 hours. Later, the prosecutor said to me "time served will work, right? Monday to Tuesday, that's three days isn't it?"
Travesty of Justice (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been following this trial for the last few weeks reading Ars, Wired, TechDirt and listening to Free Talk Live. The Judge basically hamstringed the defense ruling that they should only receive the prosecution's evidence against him...the weekend before the trial began. That right there is such a fundamental insult to the basic rights of any accused that should horrify and enrage anyone who believed in our justice system's impartiality. Add that to the fact that the judge allowed the the prosecution t
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Since the prosecution accused him of these "murders for hire" were paid for by his personal Bitcoins, citing his laptop contents as proof, I think understanding how a blockchain operates and how they did not enter into evidence matching transactions from the drive that corresponded to persistent and openly public blocks which Bitcoin, by it's very nature is available to every single person who has a Bitcoin wallet, would have been easy to establish extremely reasonable doubt of the veracity of the Fed's cla
The real Dread Pirate Roberts (Score:3)
Maybe I'm late to the party here, but I only just now realized that Dread Pirate Roberts' actual legal defense was that he'd left the ship to his cabin boy, and has been retired for the past 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.
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And a good argument that would have been. If the FBI had tracked him down at a resort in Patagonia with no Internet connection that is, instead of a library in California.
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... with his laptop logged in to the Silk Road admin site, yeah.
How's that BitCoin is anonymous thing working out? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yea, not so well for this guy.
It might be harder for the government to track you down by dumping subpoenas on banks like they are accustomed to, but you got to understand, BitCoin is just as traceable (if not more). All the data they need to trace every transaction a Coin has bee though is in the block chain for that coin, and every transaction gets published to the mining community for verification of the block chain. Once they figure out which is your wallet, all they need to do is search the records a
Guilty/Not Guilty, so what (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone looking at life in prison for a non-violent drug crime is living under an unjust system.
And which law would you have them nullify? (Score:3, Informative)
The idea that it should be illegal to knowingly profit from transactions of highly illegal products is not exactly an obscure or particularly controversial area of jurisprudence, nor it it an example of overly-broad vaguely-worded laws, like, say, CFAA prosecutions.
And jury nullification is supposed to be for juries to nullify illegal laws (i.e. unconstitutional ones), not laws they might have a personal disagreement with.
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And jury nullification is supposed to be for juries to nullify illegal laws (i.e. unconstitutional ones), not laws they might have a personal disagreement with.
The appeals process is how we overturn unconstitutional laws (Testing constitutionality is basically the Supreme Court's only job nowadays). Jury nullification is absolutely about overturning unjust laws whether the courts think they happen to be constitutional or not.
Re:And which law would you have them nullify? (Score:5, Insightful)
And jury nullification is supposed to be for juries to nullify illegal laws (i.e. unconstitutional ones), not laws they might have a personal disagreement with.
And who's to stop them? This is why the legal system hates jury nullification, you can rule not just on the facts and the law but on who the accused and the victim are. Slutty drunk girl? Rape charges dismissed. White guy on trial killing a black guy? Murder charges dismissed. You can find several people in this thread who'd give him a free pass to break any law he wants because he's some sort of "hero" to them.
If the legislative and/or judicial branch of the government is broken then trying to fix it with jury nullification is like putting a band aid on a man that has jumped on a grenade, the rules will keep changing until the rule of law is restored. It's random as one man is convicted today and another is let go tomorrow for the same crime depending on who's on jury duty. Take a look at your average jury, do you really think it would be used most for the right or wrong reasons? Even smart people here are more than willing to abuse it, now imagine the dumb ones.
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Take a look at your average jury, do you really think it would be used most for the right or wrong reasons?
The point is that it's better to let ten guilty people go free than for one innocent to be convicted.
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or England where they're steering more and more toward summary findings of fact (hence of guilt) that don't need juries. You can be sen down for 25 years by ONE MAN who controls EVERY LAST LITTLE THING that goes on in "his" "court". Even to the point of closing the room to the public.
Justice? Don't make me fucking laugh. The final nail was pounded home on April 1 2006.
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Perhaps you are confunding "states nullification" of unconstitutional laws with "jury nullification" that is much broader, [lawcollective.org] and is for any case where application of the law could lead to an unjust result. No one expect a jury to be constitutional experts, while state legislatures might have such expertise.
It turns very much on the question of what level of knowledge reachs the level of criminal "knowingly". Did he monitor transactions in real-time and encourage (cut fees) on some? Police profit (civil for
Not really a good idea... (Score:2)
Oh, you are right, jury nullification is no more or less than the statement that a jury can acquit a defendant for any reason they damn well please and there's nothing to stop them; this is obvious to anybody that ever paid a lick of attention in 8th-grade civics class. I would hope it would only be used to refuse to convict under illegal laws, because otherwise it turns the concept of us being a nation of laws, and not men, on it's head. If a prosecution produces an unpleasant result under the law, but t
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If ever there was a case that cried out for JURY NULLIFICATION this is it.
Too bad the jury did not agree with you.
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I remember reading a thread on netnews back around 1983 where an 'old-timer' observed, "This discussion has reached the FIJA stage. Time to log off".
Good to see some things never change.
sPh
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Jury Nullification is how many of the founding fathers got away with violating various tax rules and stuff the Great Britain was trying to enforce ....
That said, JN comes up in just about every time slashdot covers a trial. The chance that any person will be blessed with JN is probably less than winning the Powerball lottery twice in a row. It just doesn't happen.
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JN is a progression of Clause 61 Magna Carta. This says, basically, that a quarter of Barons may petition the King (who wrote the Law) and if they don't get satisfaction, bring him to public trial. Juries at that time (from the time of King alfred The Great) consisted of 25 men of virtue (soldiers, elders or knights), 25 because there could not be a hung vote, it was always a majority, which was reduced to 12 (majority was therefore 7) only in the latter part of the 19th Century. However you count a jury, a
Re:Buying drugs (Score:5, Funny)
Or you know, you could just hop on a plane to Colorado.
Drugs, CP, Hitmen, etc.. (Score:2)
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Ulbricht created a marketplace that was free from government interference to facilitate free and open transactions with anonymity, what was bought and sold were entirely the choices of the individual vendors and buyers. With "Free" and "Anonymous" being the cruxes of that concept, by definition he did not control the content. I think you are conflating two entirely different concepts.
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But he made a commission on sales. A seller offers drugs or guns and finds a buyer. The buyer pays Ulbricht in bitcoins which are held in escrow until he receives his drugs or guns, at which point Ulbricht transfers the money to the buyer. So he's knowingly and willingly complicit in and profiting from each sale, and he is fully aware of the nature of the goods exchanged.
I fail to see how it's significantly different in nature than any other drug dealer who sits between the drug supplier and the drug buyer.
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Ulbricht created a marketplace that was free from government interference to facilitate free and open transactions with anonymity,
Obviously THAT's not true now is it? He just got convicted of 7 criminal charges and is likely to do time in prison for profiting from this "free from government interference" marketplace... If that's not government interference, what is?
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except soldiers, with the rare exception of scout snipers, are trained to aim for the centre of mass (the trunk). Head shots are rare in the extreme, especially over ranges above 7 yards.
EHP is designed to expand or explode in a mushroom fashion on impact, turning into many smaller tumbling fragments that shred whatever they're passing through. This is what's called projectile spalling. Boattail hardpoint rounds are designed to drill through the point of impact causing hard tissue such as bone, to shatter a
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If Fred credibly threatens to kill Bob's Family in the future, and the only way to prevent that is for Dave to kill Fred, then Dave is justified in killing Fred.
According to what system of ethics? Certainly not according to US or British legal tradition. Threats must be more than credible, they must be imminent before you can respond with force of any kind, much less deadly force.
If on Monday a man credibly threatens to kill your family on Friday and you hunt him down and kill him on Wednesday, you're going away for murder 1.
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There wasn't anything else you could have done? Call police? Leave town? That's the whole reason the threat has to be imminent. If it isn't you've got time to find another way, and society demands that you do. Killing in defense is a last resort.
So, yeah, you're going away for murder, and if you'd maybe had a couple of extra brain cells you could have found a way to stop the threat without committing premeditated murder, so you'd be free to enjoy your family.
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As with most glibertarian arguments, there is a hidden clause that does a lot of heavy lifting.
sPh
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As much as I agree that this case seems to have lots of holes in it, running a marketplace is not 'common carrier'. The important distinction is that a common carrier is paid to provide a 'connection' service, after which you can do anything you like with it. A marketplace connects a buyer to a seller, handles the money, and takes a fee for that introduction. Thus, the marketplace has to know what is being sold and whom the buyer and seller are, and further more collects the money from the buyer and gives i
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No he was an active facilitator for _every_ transaction. Claiming that to be the equivalent to an ISP is just showing ignorance in both the silk road and ISP responsibilities.