[Ulbricht] built it, he grew it, he operated it from start to bottom until the end
Ah, maybe he should have operated it from top to finish instead, clearly he was confused...
The decision in the trial of accused Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht is heading for the jury after attorneys presented their closing arguments in a New York City courtroom on Tuesday. Ulbricht's attorney Joshua Dratel presented a brief defense that consisted of a three character witnesses, a private investigator who gave …
I have been following this with my uninterested-in-internet-or-legal-affairs teenager. When TDPR announced his defense, I asked if it was at all believable. Given the look I got back, I had a pretty good idea what the outcome was going to be.
I know it's fun to blame the lawyers, but it probably isn't the fault of the defence brief, more likely the defendant has not been too helpful, or has opted to not go after some of the stronger options available. This may tie in to the fact that the defendant is facing other charges, and might rely on something that would be contradicted by his more robust options in this trial.
From what I gathered from people who actually know US law (I know a bit of contract law, not much criminal) if he had said the Icelandic server was his, then the search and seizure of it would be on very shaky legal grounds, and the majority of the state's evidence may have been dismissed. The judge pretty much pointed this out, but the defence decided to not make the claim.
There are a few ideas about this, one being that "the server is mine" might make the running Silk Road prosecution fail, but would slam dunk the attempted murder charges. Others include Ross directing his lawyer to not se this approach, that the funding for his defence would dry up (it's donations) if he went and said "Argh, I be DPR, that be my scurvy server".
In my experience if there is idiocy in a courtroom, it's caused by clients, rather than lawyers. They might be evil and want to get paid, but they usually will give you the best advice to win.
Not at all. "Not guilty" doesn't mean "you didn't do it", it means "there isn't enough evidence to prove that you did it beyond reasonable doubt".
You can be convicted because of lots of little things where each little thing on its own is not proven beyond reasonable doubt, but there is enough evidence that you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt for the whole mess.
No, why would you think otherwise? If it can be proven (under the appropriate standard of evidence) that you did X but not Y, then it's still been proven that you did X and will be sentenced accordingly. It also doesn't necessarily mean you didn't do Y (though it obviously can as well), just that the prosecution didn't meet its burden of proof. And being charged with several things you weren't proven to have done doesn't mean you weren't found guilty of everything else and it doesn't mean you're entitled to a retrial on just the things you were, y'know, already found guilty of doing.
There's more about bringing all claims in one proceeding, which gets into issues of double jeopardy and preclusion but I think you get the idea.