But I think the people in this subthread believe that the judge's possible belief that Ulbricht had committed other, violent crimes influenced his sentencing decision.

That is, in the absence of suspicion of other crimes, he would have gotten a much less severe sentence.

I get that judges have to use all sorts of discretion when doing sentencing, and despite the "points system" around that, still have some leeway. My view is that judges should not be looking at other crimes that they may believe the defendant has committed -- even if they were not charged or not convicted -- and include that information in their sentencing decisions. I can't say for certain, of course, that's what happened here.

Maybe in Ulbrict's case, justice actually was served. Maybe he did those other things, and in a perfect world, sufficient evidence would have been found, and he would have been convicted of more serious charges. But we don't live in that perfect world, and for every Ulbricht who gets this "correct" treatment, there are certainly several others who get an overly-harsh sentence (still within guidelines, but harsher than is warranted) because people believe they did other stuff that couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.