His Karpeles defense was laughable.

The defense learned during discovery that there was an affidavit from one of the investigators suggesting that Karpeles was a likely SR suspect. That suspicion was based on Karpeles position in the BTC ecosystem and, more damningly, on the fact that a public website promoting Silk Road was running from Karpeles own hardware.

It turns out that Karpeles had hardware with a Silk Road website because he ran a hosting company. Someone paid him to stand up a machine that hosted that site.

That someone? According to the evidence discovered from Ulbricht's laptop: Ross Ulbricht.

A Karpeles holding company also registered silkroadmarket.org, which during his ownership was posting mirrors of updates from DPR

The "Karpeles holding company" was a domain registrar which accepted Bitcoin as payments. The customer of the domain registrar? One Ross Ulbricht! Through an alias kept in an aliases file on his computer, using an email account to which his computer held the password.

Ulbricht purchased it when it dropped, Karpeles originally registered it:

https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/555821164661321728

"don't try and have people killed" is probably also a fairly good warning to people involved in these enterprises.

> Ask yourself: Why wasn't he charged with these crimes?

He will be in another trial.

Even if the Baltimore trial happens, it's inappropriate to use the charges there to justify the circus of the trial that just transpired.

The murder-for-hire was brought up in this trial since they are sentence modifiers for the charges he was facing. The base charges he faced would lead to X years in jail (IIRC; 15-25 if served concurrently) but many of the charges can be modified leading to X+Y years in jail where Y depends on things like attempts at violence.

For all the non-violence fans in the room; Should a heroin dealer who tells his lackies to beat up the competition face a longer sentence than a heroin dealer who initiates no violence? The Federal Sentencing Guidelines think so.

They work on a system of Levels to categorize how bad his crime was:

Narcotics Trafficking over 5kg of Cocaine: Level 30

Narcotics Trafficking by someone who directs violence: +2 Levels

Narcotics Trafficking by someone who promotes their enterprise via mass media: +2 Levels

Narcotics Trafficking by someone who maintains a property to produce drugs: +2 Levels

Etc. etc. So instead of the ~15 year minimum a Level 30 charge would face, Ross is looking at more like a 24 year minimum sentence that corresponds with Level 38 charges.

I think a heroin dealer who is convicted of telling his lackies to beat up the competition should face a longer sentence than a heroin dealer who initiates no violence. Increasing the sentence based on unproven allegations just sounds like bad justice to me.

There is a body of law related to how these types of facts are established, and which types of facts can be determined by a judge vs. which must be put to the jury.

I'm sure there is. That doesn't mean I have to agree that it's good and proper justice.

He didn't. These were lies - straight up lies - designed to impugn his credibility during jury selection and the bail proceeding.

Ask yourself: Why wasn't he charged with these crimes?

Because no one was murdered. He tried to hire a hitman but the hitman ended up being an undercover FBI agent.

Don't defend this man, he is manipulative human garbage.

Was the hitman really an undercover agent? I though it was just someone scamming Ross for as much $ as possible.

redandwhite was almost certainly a scammer and got paid to kill friendlychemist and tony76 + three roommates. Nob was an undercover agent who got paid to kill "The Employee" aka flush aka cronicpain aka Curtis Green. Two different incidences.

Which would still be a crime, if he committed it. But he wasn't tried for it.

he will be in another trial

Put him away for the things that are an easy conviction, rather than the more nebulous details of that attempt. Why cloud things?

Not sure why this is being down voted.

Of the two sets of charges, one was a much more easy conviction - the drug dealing.

It's not the prosecutor's job to introduce clouds of doubt into a prosecution. And this is not a case of "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be found guilty". He was, apparently quite overwhelmingly guilty of the charges related to running Silk Road. Why risk a conviction by charging him with something that might not stick (yes, I realize you can be found guilty of some charges and not others, but a whole world of doubt is introduced)?

Despite what others are saying about why he was not charged with these crimes, the real reason is because he is being indicted with these crimes, federally, in Maryland on those charges. He will face that trial next.

Now, to be fair, these allegations (not lies, allegations) could be just that. Allegations. The prosecution will need to prove them to get a conviction. The reason he is facing these separately could be that these attempted murder of a federal witness charges are much harder to prove and thus convict on.

Three hours to convict on seven counts, this was a backboard shattering slam dunk.