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Notes -
this practice is so clearly injust that I really have trouble with how so many people accept it as required praxis. Is "being made an example out of" really just something people accept in our anarcho tyranny society that it can be said as a matter of course? We're seriously playing duck duck goose with decades of people's lives in the balance?
Ulbricht's sentence was based off of the idea that he ordered killings, which was shown "by a preponderance of evidence." This is not how we are supposed to do criminal law in the US; I have no idea how or why none of the appeals went anywhere. And no matter what you think of selling drugs, no one gets a double life sentence just for that.
It's also a question of fairness--I don't believe that anyone else involved with the original or subsequent silk roads got anywhere near as long a sentence.
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