Ross Ulbricht’s legal team, family and supporters have not given up fighting for the release of Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence in an American prison as a creator and operator of Silk Road, the famous Darknet Market website.
On July 14, activists of the Free Ross organization launched another petition aimed to defend Ulbricht’s freedom. The petition published on Change.org seeks mercy for 34-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a graduate from Pennsylvania State University, and urges US President Donald Trump to grant him amnesty. It has garnered more than 6,000 supporters for three days.
In 2011, Ross Ulbricht founded the popular DarkNet website Silk Road, which was an unregulated e-commerce marketplace where people could use Bitcoins to anonymously buy and sell a wide range of goods. Some of them were illegal, including drugs, though such transactions involved “most commonly small amounts of cannabis”, as the petition claims.
The site, based on the Tor browser, placed the highest priority on users’ privacy and anonymity, as Ulbricht himself explained it, as he was carried away by the ideas of freedom and free markets.
However, law enforcement bodies didn’t share his views, and in 2013 Ulbricht was arrested and later, in 2015, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for creating and running Silk Road. He was convicted on a number of counts, such as money laundering and drug trafficking.
Notably, US District Judge Katherine Forrest emphasized she wanted to make this case an example to prevent others from committing similar crimes and thus she sought the most severe penalty for Ulbricht.
Meanwhile, in the petition his supporters and family, including Ulbricht's mother, claim that the case against him was rigged and he “did not get a fair trial”.
“Ross’s investigation, trial and sentencing were rife with abuse. […] prosecutorial misconduct, constitutional violations and reliance on unproven allegations.”
They also stress that the verdict was too harsh for a man who had no criminal history. “A double life sentence plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole” seems “draconian” and unjustifiably cruel, since all the charges against him were non-violent, the petition states.
“Ross is condemned to die in prison, not for dealing drugs himself but for a website where others did. This is far harsher than the punishment for many murderers, pedophiles, rapists and other violent people,” the petition reads, arguing that such a penalty is neither reasonable nor constitutional.
Notably, at its annual national convention on July 3, the US Libertarian Party adopted a resolution, urging the US President to grant Ulbricht a pardon.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
