The attorney for convicted Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht told a federal appeals court in New York on Thursday that corrupt government agents and questionable evidence should have been discussed during trial before his client was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015 for running the infamous internet marketplace.
Mr. Ulbricht, 32, is appealing a significant prison sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest last year after a jury convicted him on charges including money laundering, computer hacking and narcotics trafficking conspiracy in relation to running Silk Road, a now defunct website where vendors sold contraband ranging from hacking tools to hard drugs.
Defense attorney Joshua Dratel argued on Ulbricht’s behalf before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City this week, and didn’t deny his client ran Silk Road prior to being arrested in Oct. 2013. He indicated, however, that a far different outcome could have unfolded had the government allowed certain evidence to be entered during trial, and posed questions about the subsequent sentencing of a nonviolent offender to life behind bars.
“The government got to present its case but the defense was not afforded the same opportunity,” Mr. Dratel told a three-member panel of the appeals court, the New York Post reported. “There was preclusion of every effort the defense made to mount a defense.”
Mr. Dratel raised concerns particularly over the government’s refusal to let jurors know during trial that two of the federal agents involved in shutting down Silk Road had been secretly charged after stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the website during the course of their investigation. Both agents pleaded guilty and both were sentenced to several years in prison, but their corruption was kept under wraps until after Ulbricht’s trial.
Those agents had direct access to Silk Road and could have tainted evidence used against Ulbricht, Mr. Dratel said Thursday.
“They hijacked accounts. They changed passwords. They stole money,” the attorney argued. “They were inside the guts of this website.”
“For us this is a critical issue and what we wanted was a chance to put it before a jury,” Mr. Dratel said.
Nonetheless, potentially tainted evidence wouldn’t dismiss the fact that authorities caught Ulbricht red-handed. He was arrested inside a San Francisco library three years ago this week while he used his personal laptop to administer the website.
“So what, how does it show your client didn’t do these crimes?” Circuit Judge Christopher Droney asked Mr. Dratel, Reuters reported.
On the government’s part, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eun Young Choi defended the sentencing Thursday and argued that the scope of Silk Road’s operations and the harm it caused was “unprecedented” in scale. Mr. Ulbricht was “callous and indifferent” to his part in a global operation that enabled drug addicts, she said.
Prosecutors previously said they’ve linked several drug purchases made on Silk Road to individuals who then suffered fatal overdoses. Mr. Ulbricht was not convicted of their deaths, but the parents of some of the deceased were asked to testify during his sentencing.
“Does this [testimony] create an enormous emotional overload for something that’s effectively present in every heroin case?” Judge Gerald Lynch asked during Thursday’s hearing, Wired reported. “Why does this guy get a life sentence?”
The Second Circuit did not immediately rule on the appeal, and the judges didn’t indicate when a decision will be announced, reported Newsday.
Silk Road facilitated $1.2 billion in annual sales before being seized in October 2013, the FBI said at the time. Multiple cases have been launched in the years since against individuals accused of running copycat sites launched after the original Silk Road went offline.
Roger Thomas Clark, a Canadian man accused of being Mr. Ulbricht’s righthand man, was arrested in Thailand last year and is currently behind bars in Bangkok while he fights off extradition efforts waged by the Justice Department. He’ll face life imprisonment as well if extradited to the U.S. and found guilty of narcotics conspiracy like his alleged former associate .
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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