Life term upheld for Silk Road’s creator
Ross Ulbricht, a former Austin resident and 2002 Westlake High grad who created the underground drug-selling market Silk Road, lost an appeal to void his conviction and life term. Wednesday’s ruling by the U.S. Second Court of Appeals in New York affirms a lower court’s 2015 decision.
Attorneys for Ulbricht argued in October that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. They also said the life sentence was unreasonable. But in a lengthy 139-page ruling, the appellate judges said they sided with the lower court because “the district court gave Ulbricht’s sentence the thorough consideration that it required, reviewing the voluminous sentencing submissions, analyzing the factors required by law, and carefully weighing Ulbricht’s mitigating arguments. The extraordinarily detailed sentencing transcript shows that the district court appreciated its important responsibility in considering a sentence of such magnitude and carried out that responsibility with care and prudence. Under the law, we cannot say that its decision was substantively unreasonable.”
In handing down the life sentence, the district judge cited six deaths from drugs bought on Ulbricht’s site and five people he tried to have killed because he deemed them a threat to the operation, which he ran using the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts.”
His 2013 arrest thwarted an unprecedented operation that enabled nearly 4,000 drug dealers to reach more than 100,000 online buyers in several continents. At his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht enabled more than 1 million drug deals on Silk Road and made about $18 million in Bitcoin. They said sales of illegal drugs of every type, representing at least $180 million, were delivered through the anonymous online website.