The judge also had the opportunity to take the murder-for-hire charges into account when sentencing, even though they were never charged at trial. “Unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise, judges may regularly consider significant but unpunished crimes of this nature,” Richman says.
Ulbricht has never fully acknowledged the harm caused by the Silk Road’s massive sales of drugs, including heroin and other opiates, and continues to show no remorse for his actions in his public Twitter posts, argues Jared Der-Yeghiayan, former a Department of Homeland Security Investigations agent who went undercover to infiltrate the Silk Road as part of the case against Ulbricht.
“The thought of his release doesn’t worry me at all,” says Der-Yeghiayan, who currently works as head of strategic intelligence at cryptocurrency tracking firm Chainalytic. “It worries me if the current belief is that he did nothing wrong, which doesn’t support the facts of the case.”
However, considering that Ulbricht has already spent 11 years in prison, the question remains whether this offense deserves a life sentence. While Ulbricht’s harsh verdict may be final in a strictly technical sense, says Leeza Garber, a law professor at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, in complicated cases such as this one it is impossible to clearly separate the legal from the ethical and political issues.
“Just because something is reasonable doesn’t mean it’s right,” Garber says. “We have such complex and conflicting views on the war on drugs and the use of prisons in this country. Combine that with the idea that this crime took place in part in cyberspace, and it gets extremely messy. It is difficult to take into account such a combination of issues.”
Some prison reform advocates, many of whom support Ulbricht’s clemency petition, believe sentencing rules need to be changed. They believe the emphasis should be on rehabilitation, not revenge, and that parole should be reintroduced into the federal penal system. They hope Ulbricht’s release will be a catalyst.
“Ross has served more than enough time. He was an exemplary prisoner. He is a first-time violent offender. “He poses no threat to the safety of the community,” says Alice Johnson, chief executive of the criminal justice reform foundation Taking Action for Good, who herself spent two decades in prison for drug trafficking before Trump commuted her life sentence in 2018. “I believe the Ross Case will pave the way for many other people who wrongly received these draconian sentences to return home.”