The prosecutors did not ask for what they thought was a fair sentence for the alleged crimes. Instead they asked for the biggest sentence they thought they could attain.
My guess is the clock ran out and the USAO decided their scare piece fulfilled its intended purpose. Always easier to get a conviction and maximum sentence against somebody when you can insinuate they did something even worse.
The statute of limitations is satisfied if charges are filed before the SOL expires.
The speedy trial right provides that a defendant must be brought to trial within X days of charges being filed, unless the defendant voluntarily waives that right. (In CA, it was 60 days when I still practiced crimlaw. Federal law provides for 70 days, but no trial can begin within 30 days of arraignment.)
Most defendants waive the speedy trial right for some reason, usually because their attorneys convince it's a good idea. (It never is. You never want the prosecution to have more time to investigate.)
The reason lawyers tend to ignore the speedy trial act is a practical one. They object, the judge dismisses the charges without prejudice, and the prosecution refiles the charges (or substantially similar ones). Speedy trial clock reset to zero. Everybody except the defendant shares a laugh.
In many cases (including mine), the prosecutor will of their own accord and with no apparent prompting, supersede their indictment with minimal changes, achieving much the same result. It's like hitting the snooze button on a case you want to procrastinate (or sweat/squeeze the defendant into a plea agreement).
This works great until the case is dismissed without prejudice and then the prosecution tries to refile past the statute of limitations. Whoops. Check, and mate. The only practical power of the speedy trial act.
If a judge dismisses charges, then the defendant goes free. Defendants are okay with that. Sure, it gives prosecutors time to file more charges (so long as the SOL hasn't expired), but they only get that one free bite. The second time they file, judges will only dismiss charges on prosecutor motion with prejudice.
In many cases (including mine), the prosecutor will of their own accord and with no apparent prompting, supersede their indictment with minimal changes, achieving much the same result. It's like hitting the snooze button on a case you want to procrastinate (or sweat/squeeze the defendant into a plea agreement).
It sounds like you have a bad lawyer, but you're also not understanding what's going on. The original charges must still be brought to trial within 70 days of the original indictment...unless you (through your lawyer) waived that right. The superseding indictment only extends that window by 70 days...for the new charges. And judges generally only approve superseding indictments once. After that, the prosecutors must show cause as to why they couldn't get things right the first time.
This works great until the case is dismissed without prejudice and then the prosecution tries to refile past the statute of limitations. Whoops. Check, and mate. The only practical power of the speedy trial act.
What you just described was the SOL expiring. It had nothing to do with the speedy trial act.
Umm.. thank you for your service?
It sounds like you have a bad lawyer, but you're also not understanding what's going on.
Well, I'm on my fourth (or fifth? I've lost count), and statistics suggest there must have been a bad one in there somewhere. I think I have a firmer grip than a lot of people. Allow me to demonstrate:
The original charges must still be brought to trial within 70 days of the original indictment...unless you (through your lawyer) waived that right.
Judges don't keep a running tally of non-tolled days and poll counsel on whether they want to waive their right to a speedy trial. In my particular case, 1006 days passed between original indictment and trial, and while my counsel could have brought an STA/6th amendment motion to dismiss and didn't, I wouldn't quite characterize that as waiving.
And judges generally only approve superseding indictments once.
Judges don't "approve" indictments on the federal level. Indictments (even superseding ones) come from grand juries. Judging by the number of 8th superseding, 9th superseding, and nth superseding (where n has 2 digits) indictments in a number of cases in the literature, this statement would appear to be provably false.
What you just described was the SOL expiring. It had nothing to do with the speedy trial act.
But without any cause to dismiss the case, you can be tried and convicted well after the SOL runs, provided you were charged prior. The STA provides the cause.
You're right, the judges don't. The judge's law clerk(s) do, as should your own lawyer(s). However, please note that not bringing a speedy trial motion is the same thing as waiving that right. The speedy trial right is an asserted right, meaning that you have to actively pursue it. Courts simply don't have the capacity to grant it to everyone, especially since most people waive it anyway.
Judges don't "approve" indictments on the federal level. Indictments (even superseding ones) come from grand juries. Judging by the number of 8th superseding, 9th superseding, and nth superseding (where n has 2 digits) indictments in a number of cases in the literature, this statement would appear to be provably false.
Judges absolutely approve or reject superseding indictments once a defendant has been charged. Whether or not the prosecutor chooses to get a dozen superseding indictments before charging or arraigning a defendant is a very different thing.
But without any cause to dismiss the case, you can be tried and convicted well after the SOL runs, provided you were charged prior. The STA provides the cause.
That's true, but that's not what you're describing. You originally described a prosecutor dismissing charges for some reason, but then not refiling charges before the SOL expires. If the speedy trial right was at issue, the prosecutor would simply ask the defense for a waiver, which the lawyer will usually grant unless there's a reason not to, i.e., client says no or the lawyer is aware the prosecutor has insufficient evidence but given time could acquire it. (The latter will never apply so close to an SOL expiring--if the prosecution doesn't have the evidence after 5/6/7 years, the difference of a few days or weeks won't matter.)
And the top prosecutor in the federal system for a state is called... the "U.S. Attorney".
It's certainly not some random attorney who happens to hold U.S. citizenship.
Not to speak of the murders he paid for, but that were thankfully stopped in the stage where it‘s still only an attempt.
(Long version: he ran a platform where people sold the victims drugs, from which sales he financially profited). Victims who subsequently died.
I assume you think that they would have overdosed from other peoples' drugs anyway, but as I wrote, I don't accept that, so we can probably not discuss this productively.
Presumably illegal substances are illegal in part based on risk, so even participating in the transaction you're assuming that risk.
I don't think most people intend or want their customers ODing on their product, but it understandably will happen with some given the power of the addiction.
Even still I think where this thread is going is reaching in some respects. Sure people died from the drugs that were sold on the silk road, but from my understanding they wern't sold by Ross directly. Sure it he was getting a profit for the use of the silk road basically being the ebay for illegal stuff, but that to me seems more like organized crime and being a kingpin of sorts.
The key word here is "presumably".
It's a stretch to say that he caused their deaths because a third party willingly sold them drugs on his platform that they then willingly ingested.
He was involved in their deaths, yes, but he did not cause them.
(Otherwise the sellers would claim, that the marketplace is the real culpit, and they just sold some stuff)
There are certain limits to it, so that totally far-flung causations don't count, but this is not a close call.
People have been buying and OD'ing on opiates for centuries. They could easily have happened without SR.
How would you ever convict a thief if "someone else could have stolen it, had the defendant not been there first" was a valid defense?
You need to look at the concrete situation and in that situation the drugs came via Silk Road.
Although since dying of a drug overdose does not (directly) harm third parties, it's closer to trying to convict the manufacturers/sellers of rope for cases of suicide by hanging.
There are some drugs which can kill you which no one can legally sell.
There are millions of non-drug items someone can sell you which can kill you.
So I think it has nothing to do with whether people died from items sold on the marketplace, but rather that the marketplace as a whole was de facto illegal.
Contrast to OpenBazaar.
> Again, the law doesn't care about "could".
Which is it?
But he knowingly fostered the sale of controlled substances, which itself is a crime.
Every single customer could then and can still withdraw cash at an ATM, and then visit down the chain of "guy that knows a guy" until their non-narc bona fides are established, and the psuedoanonymous cash-for-drugs transaction occurs.
He's in prison for life because the War on Drugs principals needed to set up an example as deterrent, because their usual methods of investigation and interdiction were less effective at fighting obfuscated online services, and his was the most popular at the time. The judges went along with it, because they balanced the interests of the government against one guy who is almost definitely a sleazebag, and found that turning the negative PR from the apparent untouchability of Silk Road users into a win by shutting down the system, seizing the Bitcoin, and railroading the operator was fine. Even if they got reversed a few years later, after it was mostly out of the news, that was still an acceptable result. The claim that he tried to hire a hitman for contract murder definitely put a thumb on that balancing test. Without it, you're just tossing someone in prison for starting up a better Craigslist.
From what I know about the case, the prosecution was probably more influenced by politics than justice. If he were market-making for insider trading tips and discreet temporary matchmaking services, instead of drugs, stolen property, prostitution, and murders, he'd still be in business and richer than Croesus. They nailed him with a pseudo-plausible argument and a pressing need to get online black markets out of the mainstream news. It's the same reason Pirate Bay keeps losing domain names, while lesser-known trackers never seem to get the same level of opposition. The first rule of your online black market is to not talk about your online black market. If it gets too popular, it becomes the enforcement target pour encourager les autres.
There's no way in Hell he'd merit a life sentence without the attempted murder claims. Silk Road wasn't intrinsically more criminal than Visa or Mastercard payment clearing services, aside from it not automatically banning merchant accounts suspected of engaging in certain lines of business that are illegal in most jurisdictions. Silk Road was making the War on Drugs actors look like chumps, so they made Dread Pirate Roberts their public enemy number one.
I don't think he deserves the sentence that he got, but I also don't think they're ever going to let him out, because he's back in the news the instant they turn him loose. It'd be nice to believe that the justice system was more about the justice than the system, but I just can't.
It is of course an eminently reasonable thing to contend that some non-violent crime can have as much or more on the lives on its victims than violent crime. That's a different conversation though, than "we should change the classification of this act".
Also, what distinction do other market places use to avoid any prosecution, a terms of use agreement?