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0 pointsmeowface6y ago0 comments

You're casting vague FUD and not going into the details. The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.

>No one deserves this, even if they have to here for the sake of others’ safety. Certainly, the many non-violent drug offenders growing old in here don’t. Pain does not heal pain. A lost soul is not redeemed in a cage.

I agree with this part of Ulbricht's letter here. If not for those murders (which he believed were successfully carried out), he would be a non-violent drug offender, and not deserving of anywhere near a life sentence. But working your way up into a grandiose Walter White-style megalomaniac paying people to kill your foes? That's imperialistic tyrant behavior, not freedom fighter behavior.

He was very likely the only DPR (or at least the only significant one), and, in all likelihood, the chat logs are authentic. No, they weren't proven in court, due to the corrupt agents you mentioned (the defense would cast aspersions just as you did here), but if you look at the facts, they're very likely to be real. Also, the judge explicitly permitted the murder-for-hire evidence to be shown in court, which contributed to the judge's sentencing deccision.

Just to cover one of the six murders: Mark Force didn't have admin access when Ulbricht courted him to murder Curtis Green; Force was just a regular SR user at that point. (He did previously have illicit admin access via Green's account, but this account was disabled by an admin a while before the murder-for-hire conversations occurred.)

That entire encounter and conversation was documented in real-time by law enforcement who had access to Force's account, so Force couldn't have just doctored them. Yes, there are some other circumstances here, like Force (unknowingly to law enforcement at the moment) using Green's account to steal Bitcoins before all of this, which is what caused Ulbricht to later order Green's murder, but he definitely wasn't entrapped or tricked into murdering him. Ulbricht was the one who suggested the murder and requested it, and he paid him $80,000 upon seeing staged photos of what appeared to be Green's bloody corpse. These Bitcoin transactions are obviously all public.

Read the chat logs ordering Green's and FriendlyChemist's (and later FriendlyChemist's associates) murders and tell me what you think:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqepaijrm8lsqsm/260502700-Ulbricht... - Pages 31 - 51

https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...

You can see Ulbricht deliberating the decision with his "advisor", Variety Jones / Cimon, before finally concluding he had to die.

No, I didn't give a rock-solid defense of why I think they're authentic, but I don't have the time at the moment. If this thread is still active, I may give a more lengthy analysis later as to why I think they're legitimate.

I believe he's basically a modern mini-Pablo Escobar. I do think drugs should be legalized - specifically to prevent megalomaniacs like Ulbricht from gaining immense, malignant power and ambition. I hope to see the day when all drugs are legal for recreational use while he remains rotting in prison, aged 85.

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alexandercrohde6y ago

>> The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.

Well maybe he should have been charged for that.

meowfaceOP6y ago

It would've been good, for sure. It's unfortunate Mark Force had to fuck it all up.

To be clear, though, the judge did still explicitly permit the murder-for-hire evidence to be submitted during trial, even though he wasn't charged for it. They also factored it into the sentencing.

When I say "most critical part", I mean from a moral standpoint, especially for people who see no moral issue with drugs. For the government, the drug kingpin stuff was enough to build a case. For libertarian-sympathizing people who otherwise would've supported him, the murders-for-hire are what change this from something worthy of protest to something pretty open-and-shut.

eLLyfiGneg6y ago

The prosecutors were going after much more serious charges, namely the conspiracy to traffic narcotics and the CCE so they rightly threw the evidence towards proving those in court rather than take a segue into a charge that has something like a 10 year max sentence. A "non-violent" kingpin is a rarity, and they proved with massive amounts of evidence that Ulbricht was like any other kingpin, willing to use violence to protect his empire. The judge methodically walked through the sentencing guidelines, and Ulbricht scored a whopping 50 out of 43 (only 2 points were added for the directed use of violence).

Ulbricht should be grateful none of the murders actually happened as the CCE has a special clause for murders carried out as part of operating the criminal enterprise, making the defendant eligible for the death penalty. Contract murder is quite serious because of the huge amount of premeditation involved (i.e. not a "crime of passion" or temporary misjudgment) and cold-blooded motives such as money or concealing other criminal activity.

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