We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
ANOTHER ROUTE TO CLEMENCY (BUT NOT AN EASY ONE)
Ross Ulbricht (known as “Dread Pirate Roberts” to his friends, or sometimes just “DPR” for short) is serving a life term at the sunny U.S. Penitentiary in Tucson for having set up an Internet dark-web marketplace called “Silk Road,” where drugs, guns and criminal acts were bought and sold for bitcoins. As of this week, his change.org petition seeking support for a request for a Presidential pardon has generated an unprecedented 200,000 online signatures.
The petition, which asks President Trump to grant Ross’s application for pardon, is sponsored by the inmate’s mother and sister. His mother told Bitcoinist.com, that her son “is a good person, an idealist, and a libertarian.” She said, “I didn’t think of him as someone who was interested in technology pers se, but he was interested in Bitcoin because he was a freedom guy. He worked on the Ron Paul [Presidential] campaign. He was very interested in Bitcoin as a means to monetary freedom for people.”
Whether 201,403 signatures (the count as of 8 am EDT today), including those of some from politicians and movie celebs, is enough to motivate President Trump to release DPR, a man convicted of drug trafficking on a massive scale, is impossible to predict.
The change.org page, written by Ross’s mother, says, “My son, Ross Ulbricht, is a first-time offender serving a double life sentence without parole, plus 40 years, for a website he made when he was 26 years old and passionate about free markets and privacy. Ross―an Eagle Scout, scientist and peaceful entrepreneur―had all non-violent charges at trial. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.”
Far be it from me to interfere with a mother’s loving narrative, but the facts in the Dread Pirate’s case were a bit uglier than that. The 2nd Circuit said in its decision denying Ross’s appeal:
[T]he facts of this case involve much more than simply facilitating the sale of narcotics. The district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht commissioned at least five murders in the course of protecting Silk Road’s anonymity, a finding that Ulbricht does not challenge in this appeal. Ulbricht discussed those anticipated murders callously and casually in his journal and in his communications with the purported assassin Redandwhite. For example, in connection with the first hit, he wrote to Redandwhite that “FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn’t mind if he was executed.” In the course of negotiating the price for the killing, DPR claimed that “[n]ot long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k,” but that he had “only ever commissioned the one other hit, so I’m still learning this market.” He then paid $150,000 in Bitcoins for the murder, and he received what purported to be photographic documentation if its completion. Ulbricht then wrote in his journal that he “[g]ot word that the blackmailer was executed,” before returning quickly to other tasks associated with running the site.
In negotiating the other four killings, Ulbricht initially resisted multiple murders. He instructed Redandwhite to “just hit Andrew [usernames Tony76 and nipplesuckcanuck] and leave it at that.” Redandwhite said he could do it for “150 just like last time,” but that he would not be able to recover any of DPR’s money if he killed only one person because he would have to commit the murder outside of the victim’s home or office where he stored his funds. Id. If Ulbricht wanted him to recover money, the self-professed assassin claimed, he would have to kill not only Tony76, but also his three associates. DPR responded that he would “defer to [Redandwhite’s] better judgment and hope[d] [to] recover some assets” from the hit. He then sent $500,000 in Bitcoins, the agreed-upon price for four killings, to Redandwhite. As the district court stated in discussing Ulbricht’s journal entries concerning these projected murders, his words are “the words of a man who is callous as to the consequences or the harm and suffering that [his actions] may cause others.”
The record was more than sufficient to support the district court’s reliance on those attempted murders in sentencing Ulbricht to life in prison.
Under current interpretation, a mere solicitation to commit murder is not a crime of violence under United States v. Davis, but we would be hard-pressed to call Ross a “peaceful entrepreneur.” Our local herbal tea lady is a peaceful entrepreneur, unless she has ordered a hit on the Starbucks across the street.
Still, we’ll see what effect 200,000 online signatures have on President Donald Trump. Unless it’s reported on “Fox and Friends,” we suspect not much.
Bitcoinist.com, Petition for Clemency for Silk Road Founder Nears 200k Signatures (Aug. 19)
change.org, Clemency for Ross Ulbricht, Serving Double Life for a Website
United States v. Ulbricht, 858 F.3d 71, 131 (2nd Cir. 2017)
United States v. Davis, — U.S. —, 139 S. Ct. 2319, 204 L.Ed.2d 757 (June 24, 2019)
– Thomas L. Root