Edit: I should have said "LEA's".
And nobody was actually killed.
But LEA does commonly engage in entrapment.
Maybe Roger Thomas Clark is also an undercover agent. I wonder if he'll ever go to trial.
But it's not clear where the idea came from. Some say that it was his mentor Roger Thomas Clark aka Variety Jones aka Cimon. Some say that it was DEA agent Carl Force aka Nob. In any case, it's clear that Ross was initially shocked by the idea.
Importantly: this case had apparently nothing at all to do with Force, who was involved in a different murder-for-hire scheme, one for which Ulbricht could still stand trial (but probably won't, since his life sentence is now overwhelmingly likely to stand).
I'm arguing that he was initially shocked by the idea of killing people. But I don't disagree that he later became comfortable with the idea.
In hindsight, the better option would have been adequate security, to prevent interference by adversaries. Also, there should have been policy and mechanisms in place for dealing with adversaries.
Silk Road clearly demonstrated a broad unmet demand for drugs from trusted sources. With trust based on user ratings. And by philosophy and necessity, it operated outside mundane society. If there were no laws against drug use, he could have just sued people or filed criminal charges. In future, the second realm will need its own enforcement services. And insurance.
The chat logs of the first incident seem to suggest that he took some time to come around to it but he didn't seem to find it particularly horrifying or objectionable.
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-boss-first-murder-at...
First: as the appeal opinion clearly states, there's still an open case against Ulbricht for the Force-related murder-for-hire scheme in Maryland. The charges have not been dropped.
Second, evidence of the murder-for-hire charges was presented in court. It was an element of the conspiracy charge. Not only was it presented, but it was presented in a way that Ulbricht's defense was obligated to rebut it.
Finally, the murder charges were presented again during sentencing, and proven to a "preponderance of evidence" standard during that process as well.
These details are all spelled out in the appeals decision.
They've more than cleared that bar here.
For example: Is the rational that if I earnestly believed I was planning on murdering someone who I thought existed, that it is the lead up and consideration that is the crime, rather than the actual attempt (which could never happen)?
The US market for illicit marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin was just over $100B in 2010. This lines up well with estimates that legal marijuana in Colorado was around $1B. If we're going to look at how big this guy was in absolute terms, his global market was the size of a single illicit drug in a single state.
This is where I run out of data. What's the usual sentence for single-state single-drug distributors? My impression was always that it took huge infiltration operations to get the management with more than a few years on technicalities, and the only way to get more than that was to hit them with charges like murder, bribery, or conspiracy.
Saying he only had 1% of the US market is a ridiculous way to look at it. I'm sorry but I can't muster any sympathy for this guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Criminal_Enterprise
> I'm sorry but I can't muster any sympathy for this guy.
If we're really going to get into this discussion...
The marketplace was inherently driven by "customers find and buy" rather than "suppliers market and sell" and the supply chain had tighter feedback loops, meaning that there were few mechanisms or motivations for suppliers to worsen their customers' habits. Additionally, the use of mail, cryptocurrency, and a website reduced the possibility for Things To Go Wrong, eliminated threats of force, disallowed predatory loans and bartering, and I presume provided conflict-resolution protocols that didn't involve "busting a cap in yo ass". Finally, doing it by internet and mail reduced or eliminated suppliers' ability to interact each other, forcing them to compete by attracting customers The Way Smith and Young Intended and wiping out entire classes of harm relating to organized crime and bad product.
This guy was not a saint, he did something bad, the lesser of two evils should not get off. But I hold the position that the silk road was the economic equivalent of a safe injection site, unquestionably a better harm-reducer than the War on Drugs, and that a rational approach to harm reduction supports it.
The war on drugs has failed to stop drugs, but has created a very profitable war on drugs machine, that includes extra police, equipment, for-profit prisons, etc. We all pay for that.
However, this guy made choices. And he knew exactly what he was doing, and consciously contributed to every single one of these problems, and did it solely for the profit. I know he held to a strong libertarian philosophy, but how is that helping him now? It's not.
If you want to fix these problems, make people aware. Make them campaign issues. Donate to candidates who support good solutions. Vote. Protest. Use jury nullification. Fix the broken DEA schedule system. But don't sell 1.2 billion dollars of drugs and call yourself a hero.
However, he wasn't convicted on those charges. He was convicted of 'conspiracy to traffic narcotics', money laundering, and 'computer hacking'. The 'hacking' and laundering were only necessities of the narcotics trafficking business, so it really does boil down to him being convicted to a life sentence for the drug distribution business.
I'd take no issue with a life sentence for procuring murder, but see it as an absolute travesty that drugs are demonized to the point where a life sentence for trafficking is even a possibility.