he wasn't. Alleged murders, without ever being tried before court, were used to cause sentence enhancement. All the "evidence" and "testimony" for the murder charges weren't even enough to sustain the charges, less bring them for trial. At the time of the conviction, it wasn't known that the agents were corrupt and thus, not surprisingly, the Judge gave their testimonies all the possible weight and came down that hard on the Ulbricht.
stand corrected. Judge did know that the agent was corrupted. The murder-for-hire allegations used at the sentencing didn't even have as much as a testimony of corrupt agent behind them.
I might be biased, since ToneLoc is what got me started programming.
>* Ulbricht paid to have someone killed. He was told that person had a wife and child. Ulbricht paid anyways. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.
>* Later, Ulbricht paid to have someone else killed. The would-be assassins informed him that the target lived with 3 other people. Ulbricht paid extra to have those people killed too. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.
if remember all these were based only on the testimonies of those couple of corrupt agents, and all these charges were quietly dropped. The charges were never tried before any court, including the court where drug related charges and conviction happened. The charges were only conveniently mentioned by the prosecution and judge took them account. Thus a cyberpunk became blood thirsty low-life drug dealer. Pretty dirty, though standard, trick one can say. It makes a joke out of "not guilty until proven".
It was not a predicate, it was one of three different overt acts charged in furtherance of the conspiracy. At least one overt act must be found for a conspiracy charge, but the charge to the jury did not require separate factual findings on each charged overt act. While each juror must have found it true beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed some overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, we don't know if all, some, or none of them found the murder for hire one to have been proven.
So, really, there was no meaningful finding relating to the murder for hire allegation at trial; in sentencing, yes, what you say about it as an accelerator is accurate.
I do appreciate the color from your own experiences. It's certainly not my contention that sentencing is in general fair, or even that this particular sentence was fair. Certainly: sentencing for computer crimes is egregiously unfair.
But the Ulbricht trial gets past a lot of these issues. The judge notes:
* Ulbricht paid to have someone killed. He was told that person had a wife and child. Ulbricht paid anyways. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.
* Later, Ulbricht paid to have someone else killed. The would-be assassins informed him that the target lived with 3 other people. Ulbricht paid extra to have those people killed too. The money was taken. There is no evidence he was role-playing.
At this point in the transcript, it's like: what do you think is going to happen?