I don't think there was anything fundamentally unethical about Silk Road (other than the owner very likely attempting to have several people murdered, of course), but the defense is clearly grasping at straws here.
Trial adjourned. There's a lot going on. DHS agent was pursuing Karpeles as late as August 2013. Ulbricht was arrested Oct 2013. Like I wrote in my last article, he went after Ulbricht based on a tip off from an IRS agent in September 2013. Whiplash! Amazing moment later today: in affadavit, DHS agent referred to @a_greenberg's interview of DPR and said it sounded like Mark Karpeles. Recall, this is the same guy who was on a 6 person team to arrest Ulbricht. In Aug '13 he said he had probable cause to suspect Karpeles.
[More tweets] DHS agent acknowledged under cross that he was preparing an affadavit for a warrant to search Karpeles's email. DHS agent's OWN THEORY around early to mid 2013 was that Mt. Gox and Silk Road worked in tandem. Investigation found that Mutum Sigilum, a Karpeles holding, had registered silkroadmarket.org
if you followed the story closely there is essentially no reason to believe the owner ever attempted to have anyone killed. The substantial evidence points directly to him bluffing in order to scare someone. I wrote a short summary on reddit a while back that you can read here https://www.reddit.com/r/silkroadnews/comments/1nndtk/ulbric...
Assault: "Intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. No intent to cause physical injury needs to exist, and no physical injury needs to result. So defined in tort law and the criminal statutes of some states."
It's true. In many states, you are guilty of assault if you threaten someone sufficiently, even if you had no intention of carrying out the threat. It's true for a number of violent crimes.
Not sure why the GP got downvoted for stating facts, though I don't know the details of the murder-for-hire plot, so perhaps it somehow doesn't pertain in that particular case.
Regardless, it's a legit thing. So be careful about threatening people with bodily harm.
I take issue with this characterization. Unless there is a much, much more realistic piece of evidence yet to emerge, I regard this allegation as very unlikely.
And if it's not true, and all DPR did was help people to circumvent laws prohibiting transactions of prohibited substances, then he's a libertarian hero.
Whatever one thinks about Silk Road, darknets or drug policy in general (I have issues with all of them) I would hope that Ulbricht could get a better defense than one that seems as farcical as this. I don't know what it would be.
Maybe they're hoping people will think it's too crazy not to be true? The only possible way it isn't a complete joke is if it's true.
I thought the same thing until I read the entirety of the article. As others have pointed out, the DHS investigator Jared DerYeghiayan himself was convinced Mark Karpeles was Roberts as late as 2 months prior to Ulbricht's arrest (and admitted as much under cross-examination). It seems insane, almost far-fetched even, until you consider that DerYeghiayan even went as far as to draft a search warrant for Karpeles' email. If it wasn't at least plausible, any defense attorney who went down this road would be a fool.
Having sat on a jury before, I can guarantee you that this will have at least some impact on the decision. Even if you're convinced the defendant is guilty, the job of the jury is to act as finders of fact, and if sufficient doubt is raised to that end an acquittal is likely. The trial I sat on had a similar event unfold where the law enforcement involved completely screwed up and made some admissions during cross-examination that severely harmed reaching a guilty verdict.
Law enforcement revealing true exculpatory information during cross-examination isn't screwing up -- like all witnesses, their duty is to tell the truth. (Its true that some of them may view their job as getting a conviction, and may view providing the truth as screwing up when it is contrary to that, but its a very bad idea to reinforce that meme.)
As krrrh observed, I wasn't suggesting that they screwed up by mentioning anything. I apologize for not making that obvious. I have a very deep respect for law enforcement, and I'd like to believe that on the whole they're good people. Reports that shed negative light on LEOs are common IMO like other forms of negative news: It's more interesting or captivates more viewers.
That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
On the trial I sat on, one of the most damning admissions also came from a DHS employee who admitted they handled evidence without gloves. The admission in that case wasn't the screw up--violating the number one rule of handling evidence was!
> That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up. (Though it is relevant to whether the screw-up is compounded by, or transformed into, an abuse of government power. Because that is what happens when it is material to the case and concealed, actively or passively.)
> Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up.
I'm having a difficult time following your line of reasoning. I think it's completely relevant.
If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial. In nearly all circumstances, those sorts of screw-ups are completely accidental (stress, overworked, etc.), and are extremely important to the jury's decision-making process.
You know, I just read back through my original comment, and it seems to me that you're conflating two separate points I made. So, perhaps I should reiterate and clarify in case my original comment was misleading:
1) DerYeghiayan's admission was not a screw-up. You were confusing this with an example I used for purposes of illustration in my second paragraph. The agent is going to tell the truth, obviously, but he is not going to volunteer that information without first being asked while under oath (it's not his obligation to do so). Again, not a screw-up. He just happened to share a detail that may possibly affect the jury's decision.
This is also unrelated to point #2.
2) Where I mentioned screw-up was with regards to a trial I sat on, which I offered up tangentially as an example of mistakes law enforcement can make that undoubtedly change the direction of the trial toward an acquittal. During that specific trial, DHS border patrol agents admitted they handled the evidence without gloves--that was a complete and total screw-up. In fact, it was so much so, that I distinctly remember a comment made during cross-examination of the special agent assigned by the sheriff's office. When he caught wind of what the DHS agents did, his first reaction was "Crap! We screwed up."
So yes, mistakes can be made, and yes they're completely relevant to the decision-making process of a jury.
Another example comes from the same jury pool I was assigned to, but on a trial I wasn't part of. The trial lasted, as I understand from other jurors, for the whole of about 3-4 hours. During cross-examination, one of the LEOs involved inadvertently admitted details related to another case or circumstance involving the defendant (the exact details I can't remember), and resulted in the defense attorney immediately seeking council with the judge, and the judge declaring a mistrial due to the nature of the material the officer shared while under oath.
So, no, I don't agree. It's completely relevant, especially when mistakes are admitted or committed under cross-examination. (The latter being a circumstance of biasing the jury while under cross-examination.)
Now, it's likely I'm completely missing your point, in which case I'd greatly appreciate it if you could elaborate, because I have a strong suspicion that our disagreement may be based on us thinking about or arguing two entirely unrelated points. Indeed, we might be more in agreement than not, but I'm sincerely having trouble following why you're caught up with this notion that mistakes of this category are irrelevant to a jury trial.
I think that it may have been just a misphrasing in your post that I responded to, but:
> If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial.
I didn't say "whether an LEO screws up is irrelevant to the trial".
I said "whether it [the mishandling of evidence] is admitted under cross examination is irrelevant to whether it [again, the mishandling of evidence] is a screw up."
In response to your statement: "When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up."
But I don't think that statement is, from your subsequent post, what you actually meant there (though I'm not clear what else that sentence could mean.)
The parent comment was phrased somewhat ambiguously, but I think he meant that the law enforcement admitted to screwing up, not that they screwed up by admitting.
This argument can be applied to any transaction engaged in by people who are drunk or high or otherwise in a state of modified consciousness. Is it unethical to sell Cheetos because the buyer might be a stoner who is high and not in a state to give consent to the transaction?
Well they consented to get intoxicated so they should deal with the consequences. If what you say were true, intoxicated people couldn't even buy a bottle of water because that requires entering into a contract which you claim they cannot.
The Socratic position of accepting judicial punishment doesn't make sense if you have anything you want to do with your life other than making a political point. If you think making that point, with its immense opportunity cost, is the most important remaining thing you can do, fine, but you can't assume everyone is at that place in their lives.
I don't think someone should be expected to sacrifice everything on principle in order to be justified in refusing to comply with an unjust law.
> "The Socratic position of accepting judicial punishment doesn't make sense if you have anything you want to do with your life other than making a political point."
More than that, it also doesn't hold water if you consider the possibility that sacrificing yourself isn't the best way to further your political goals.
Even if your cause is more important than everything else in your life combined, you should not allow yourself to be neutralized (jailed, or made to commit suicide) if it does not further your goal to a greater extent than anything else you could do. "Live to fight another day" is in full effect in nearly all situations.
A friend of mine once commented that high treason is one of the only crimes on the books where the penalty for attempting it is infinitely higher than for succeeding, mainly because if you do succeed, you are then in charge of the country.
