I'll be brief, but I want you to have the facts. I think they matter a great deal, not only for getting Ross out of prison – a place he clearly does not belong – but because the administration of justice in America, at least in cases that people in power care about, has been deeply corrupted.

And please understand that I've been in and around the US justice system for most of my life, including almost forty years as an expert witness. I'm not writing out of mere passion.

The Crime

Ross Ulbricht started the Silk Road hidden web site. I happen to think it was a worthy commercial adaptation, but you can make up your own mind. The site began as an experiment, selling books and other things, but soon enough became famous for selling peer-reviewed drugs from customer-rated sellers. It was an anonymous eBay, and it brought drug deals out of some very dark, dangerous places and into a modern commercial marketplace. I suspect that it saved numerous lives that way.

Drugs aren't my cup of tea, but I believe people own their bodies and that peaceful commerce should be left alone. Again you can make up your own mind, but if you think the running such a service should be punishable, please decide what sort of penalty you'd apply to it… because we'll be coming back to this question.

The Case Against Ross

The case against Ross was seized by the Southern District of New York, with the aid of Chuck Shumer, the senior senator of New York. The officials involved seem to have been his appointees; certainly the judge and chief prosecutor were.

Problems with this case sprang up immediately. First of all, it was politically driven, and openly. (See here and here.) That's not a good thing, especially because it poisoned the jury pool.

Next, the FBI flatly lied about how they found Silk Road's server. See here. What they really did was almost certainly parallel construction, which is simply a way to lie to the court.

A mere two months before Ulbricht's arrest, the lead DHS investigator swore under oath that Mark Karpeles of Mt. Gox (rather than Ross) was the person running the Silk Road site. The jury, however, wasn't allowed to know this.

Around the same time, two federal agents investigating the case pl