Judge denies retrial for 'Dread Pirate' Ulbricht in Silk Road drugs case

A US federal judge has rejected convicted Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht's request for a new trial, despite his attorneys' claims of misdeeds on the part of government agents and prosecutors. "The evidence of Ulbricht's guilt was, in all respects, overwhelming," an unsympathetic District Judge Katherine Forrest wrote in a …

[Cliff]

Valid delay?

Is 'I took on more work than I can do' really a valid reason to hold up nationally relevant and important cases? I'm sure it isn't, so why make that appeal? It just looks a bit Better Call Saul, y'know?

[ma1010]

Re: Valid delay?

Well, isn't that what you should expect when you hire your attorney from an ad on a bus bench?

[Mark 85]

If he were my defense attorney on a pending case...

...I think I'd be looking for a new one pretty damn fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely his attorney was paid off by someone.

[Jean Stone]

Please...

Attorneys make bad arguments every day without needing to be paid off to do so. Especially when your client appears to have been caught with his hand in the figurative cookie jar. If he didn't consider alternate strategies before leading off with a defense that was a spectacular non-starter that's really his problem (and the client's), not the court's.

Re: ineffective assistance of counsel, it's not likely to make much difference in the end given that one of the elements of that requires showing that but for the ineffectiveness, the outcome would have been different. Again, hand, in cookie jar. Very high bar there. Also, appeals follow after sentencing so right now it's a moot point.

[James Wheeler]

I wonder...

Appealing on the grounds of incompetent counsel might have been a better strategy.

[Matt Bryant]

More like Dreadfully Dullwitt Roberts

Shirley, he must have known the FBI et al would be looking for him, and the twit had all the evidence on his laptop without even basic encryption?!?!? TBH, I would suggest he switch his defence to that of diminished responsibility.

[Tom 13]

Sounds like Joshua Dratel ought to listen more carefully to Inigo Montoya

"I do not think th(ose) word(s) mean what you think they mean."

Or perhaps he should have simply taken Vizzini's advice and avoided one of the greatest mistakes of all time: never get involved in a land war in Asia.

[Nehmo]

Once, when I was a kid, a lawyer told me you need two things to win:

1) a legally plausible argument. 2) sympathy for the defendant.

Ross Ulbricht lost any chance for sympathy when everybody learned he tried to kill his friends. -- That's what the public thinks. Actually, the gov doesn't seem to be pursuing any of the six murder-for-hire indictments. So did the prosecution just push the murder stuff just to shape public opinion? Maybe. I don't take sides on many criminal cases because often both the prosecution and the defendant are bad in my book.

A new Silk Road is already available. Actually, there's more than one.