That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.
The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.
Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.
A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law.
Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
That said, rapists surprisingly often get just a slap on the wrist, or not even that. The US absolutely needs some balance and consistency in its sentencing, but pardoning this one guy sends a really weird message in that regard. At the very least, just commute the sentence so at least the conviction still stands.
People don't really care about child rapists see the Christian churches.
Also you were able to buy everything on silk road including guns. The multiplication effect of this is potentially more worth.
Nonetheless it's still a straw man argument. I personally would not mind at all increasing prison sentences for child rapists.
It seems that from day 1 US is moving quite far from the place it was and projected itself to others for past decades. More ruthless, money above all, not much fairness in international dealings. Maybe US will be richer after those 4 years, but at current trajectory it will lose a lot of friends and partners.
Please realize this - for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner, much more reliable long term. This is how much such moves can fuck up things.
Those benefits don't come from nowhere. You're basically getting compensated to take on the risk, same as any other business. The difference in this case is that the risk is that a bunch of thugs with guns will show up and either kill you or put you in a cage in addition to the usual financial ruin.
Your argument is not an argument for incarceration, it is an argument for abolition of prohibition and regulating the sales of some psychoactives.
The same stone would hit the fentanyl epidemic, it would hit the pushers of ”zombie drug” laced cocktails, it would hit cross-border trafficking, to name only a few. Society would massively benefit. So would the economy.
That comparison does not flatter Ross Ulbricht.
Yes. Just like San Francisco and Seattle did when they legalized drugs
Like it or not, this makes him a heroic figure in the eyes of many people.
> we shouldn't have bailed him out
Bailing him out comes at no cost. Letting him rot in prison provides no benefit to anyone.
The illegality of drugs is a government reaction, since governance failed to do anything with the problem by action. No-one deserves a life-long sentence in prison for that. This market, as well as minimal competition, lack of regulation, and high margins was created by the same power which sends people to jail.
The rest of it is.
Huh, is that NASCAR?
Life imprisonment, no parole.
You have to be a complete and utter wanker to think his punishment was justified.
I don't have a horse in this race but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "we shouldn't have bailed him out" is silicon valley bank and its depositors. That to me was the biggest show of hypocrisy by silicon valley.
The idea that possession of drugs is or should be illegal is purely arbitrary, and is used thus to justify massive violations of human rights. It is literally insane that the state claims authority over what you are allowed to do to your own body.
No victim, no crime.
Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing.
He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering.
Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
It's ridiculous that people are pretending there is any doubt about his guilt because they like crypto and/or drugs.
Do you not think the optics are a bit weird when you sentence someone to life for something relatively small, but the reason is another crime you’re very sure he did but you didn’t bother to charge him with?
I actually wonder if those charges may still be on the table now that a pardon has been granted.
Obviously the hits are a lot messier to prosecute as well with the misconduct of the FBI agents, maybe you could hammer that enough to confuse a jury. But people are commenting like the evidence outright didn't exist - I can only think they have either heard it told second-hand, or are employing motivated reasoning.
the action of suggesting, without being direct, that something unpleasant is true
[0]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/insinuat...
Clearly not that much evidence if the state didn't bother to prosecute those charges. And why would they? The judge sentenced him as though he had been found guilty of them.
1. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-6573_m647.pdf
The gov should have to prove you committed a crime before that information is admissible at sentencing.
https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_o...
The US Attorneys made a lot of publicity out of the murder-for-hire conspiracy allegations against Ulbricht in their indictments and in pre-trial media ("although there is no evidence that these murders were actually carried out." as the indictment itself obliquely says).
Ulbricht's defense could have come up with a plausible alternative explanations that he knew redandwhite was a scammer trying to extort him with a story involving nonexistent people, and was just playing along with him for whatever reasons.
[*] If the prosecution had not actually dropped those charges at trial, it would have been confirmed at trial which of the six identities were fictitious/nonexistent and whether all the accounts were managed by the same DEA agents. Hard to imagine that at least one juror wouldn't have formed a skeptical opinion about government agents extorting a person to conspire to kill fictitious people (why didn't the indictment just focus on nailing him on the lesser charges?). If this wasn't a Turing Test on when is an alleged conspiracy not a real conspiracy, then someday soon we'll see one.
ArsTechnica covered these facts in 2015:
[0]: "The hitman scam: Dread Pirate Roberts’ bizarre murder-for-hire attempts. On the darkweb, no one is who they seem." 2/2015 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/the-hitman-scam-...
[1]: Silk Road’s alleged hitman, “redandwhite,” arrested in Vancouver https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/silk-roads-alleg...
Given that he is now free, and may have access to substantial cryptocurrency wealth, I think it would probably be best under the circumstances if everyone forgot about these allegations and just left him alone to live a quiet life.
[0] gives a timeline and fills in lots of details.
Article [1] describes Bridges:
> Bridges was a cryptocurrency expert [... with offshore entities, including one that he had created after pleading guilty in this case]. According to AUSA Haun, his involvement with digital currency cases across the country caused a “staggering” number of investigations to become tainted, and subsequently shut down. She told the judge at Bridges’s sentencing that the corrupt agent had been looking out for opportunities to serve seizure warrants and somehow profit from it.
> The prosecutor also said that bitcoins were still missing, and they weren’t sure if he had worked with other corrupt agents. The US Attorney’s Office seemed to imply that there had been a lot of weird (but not necessarily chargeable) stuff that was still unaccounted for.
Article [2] describes Force:
> [Force's mental health issues]... his previous undercover assignments had ended disastrously. An assignment in Denver in 2004 had ended with a DUI. A second undercover assignment in Puerto Rico had ended in 2008 with a complete mental breakdown. Force was institutionalized, and did not return to his job until 2010. He was on desk duty until 2012, when he was assigned to investigate the Silk Road.
[0]: "Investigating The Staged Assassinations Of Silk Road" 11/2021 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/inside-silk-road-staged-...
[1]: "Great Moments in Shaun Bridges, a Corrupt Silk Road Investigator" 2/2016 https://www.vice.com/en/article/great-moments-in-shaun-bridg...
[2]: "DEA Agent Who Faked a Murder and Took Bitcoins from Silk Road Explains Himself" 10//2015 https://www.vice.com/en/article/dea-agent-who-faked-a-murder...
[1] was previously posted on HN 2/2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037889
UPDATE: apparently I'm wrong that "factual impossibility" is not a defense [0]. But Bridges and Force's criminal behavior tainted the prosecution case on this charge. Presumably why the prosecution made sure those two agents were not mentioned in the trial.
[0]: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/62360/can-you-charge...
But now we're playing legal tricks here. The real question would be if Ulbricht was willing to have people killed or not, regardless of what the defense can claim.
EDIT: just to be clear. Legally, I think it makes a big difference if someone decides to have someone else killed, tries to hire an hitman and that hitman turns out to be a policeman in disguise vs a policeman in disguise telling you "there are people doing something that is bad for you, should I kill them?". And it is perfectly right that the second case is crossing a line. But form a moral perspective, if someone answers "yes" in the second case, that still tells us a lot about that person, regardless of whether those people existed or not. The important thing is that those people were real in this person's mind.
lmao
If that isn't conspiracy to murder, I'm not sure there is anything that would qualify.
The U.S. is rather unique in providing a right to jury trials for most--in practice almost all, including misdemeanor--criminal cases. And this is a major factor for why sentencing is so harsh and prosecutions so slow in the U.S. In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
It isn't supposed to cut both ways. The prosecution is supposed to have the higher burden, and admitting unproven allegations is excessively prejudicial.
> In myriad ways the cost of criminal trials has induced the system to arrive at its current state favoring plea deals, with overlapping crimes and severe maximum penalties as cudgels. Be careful about what kind of "protections" you want to impose.
The lesson from this should be to make the protections strong enough that they can't be thwarted like this. For example, prohibit plea bargaining so that all convictions require a trial and it's forbidden to impose any penalty for demanding one.
It's not supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to be rare.
In common law, you are found guilty, and then sentenced. The judge does the sentencing, the jury finds you guilty or not.
Then there is precedent. Guidelines are created based on caselaw, so if a simular type of case arrises, that forms the "expectation" of what the sentence will be.
This means that you don't need specific levels of a crime. For example drug trafficking can be a single gram of coke for personal use, vs 15 tonnes for commercial exploitation. hence the range in sentences.
Many in jail awaiting trial are very guilty and the outcome of the legal proceeding is effectively a foregone conclusion. Exchanging a shorter sentence for a plea makes sense for all parties. Prosecutors can then spend their court time arguing more important cases, judges don't have to patiently direct clown shows where guilt is extremely obvious, and the defendant gets a lesser sentence. There is plenty of abuse in the plea system, and no shortage of outrageous prosecutorial misconduct. But that doesn't invalidate the principle of plea bargaining. No justice system is perfect and without plea bargaining every defendant would have to spend a decade in jail, maybe two, before their case makes it in front of a judge. That isn't justice. Unless we assign everybody chatgpt lawyers, judges and juries giving everybody a trial is a practical impossibility.
This standard is an enormous document, https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines which lays out the rules for adjustments. Evidence is admissible (by both sides!) for sentencing, with a lower standard of evidence and burden of proof, to either raise or lower the sentence within the very wide numbers of what the conviction was for. So the Judge in this case found that the lower burden of proof was met for additional violent crimes being committed (with Ulbricht's legal team having an opportunity to rebut), and that impacts the sentencing calculations.
Not a lawyer, but I have listened to US lawyers on podcasts.
Is it? Preponderance of the evidence is basically “more likely than not”
A preponderance of the evidence is the greater weight of the evidence after all evidence is considered. Heuristics along the lines of "yeah that fits my priors"—which is what is actually meant by "more likely than not"—are explicitly disallowed.
If Joe Smith in Smalltown, Ohio was hit by a blue bus, and hammock owns 51 of the 100 blue buses in Smalltown whereas torstenvl owns 49 of the 100 blue buses, that is insufficient evidence by itself to prevail by a preponderance standard against hammock in a civil suit.
(The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)
If there was enough evidence to demonstrate that he attempted to murder someone, why wasn't he charged and convicted of it?
Also, 2 of the DEA agents involved in his investigation were convicted of fraud in relation to the case.
I do believe he probably did attempt to have someone killed, but I'm far from certain of it, and think it should have no bearing on the case if there's not enough evidence to convict him.
It’s my understanding in the US that you are innocent until proven guilty, right? Therefore, he is indeed innocent of those crimes, since he was not proven guilty. Unless I’m missing something on how the US justice system works.
The rule of law says innocent until proven guilty.
The reason they didn't go after him for murder for hire allegations isn't because they felt bad for him or that they didn't want to waste tax payer's money.
The reason they didn't go after him for 'murder for hire' was that they knew there was no merit in it.
This is self evident.
> even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped
Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it. In fact, reading the chat logs makes his guilt pretty clear. Of course, because the whole operation was a scam, there's little he could have been convicted of. Yet just because the murder was never carried out doesn't mean he didn't intend to have someone assassinated. In my book, paying someone money to kill another person is definitely grounds for imprisonment.
That’s exactly what it means under the presumption of innocence.
Advocating for the continued imprisonment of someone for something they are legally considered innocent of, is quite literally vigilantism.
If you had a trial and they can't prove that, then yes it means you are innocent of this charge in the eyes of the law
Ross heard that one of his Silk Roads moderators was arrested, and so he hired someone to kill the mod? The assassin sent a confirmation photo of his mod, asphyxiated and covered in Campbell's Chicken and Stars Soup?? The supposed assassin was actually a corrupt DEA agent who later served federal prison time for crimes so embarrassing that they were never fully disclosed?!?!
There is some kind of thorny moral question I cannot quite wrap my brain around.
Ross did not successfully have anyone killed, but it seems that he must have thought he was successful?
Ross (it is alleged, and chat logs seem to show) ordered someone's death and paid for it and got explicit confirmation that they were dead. [actually several someones.] Did he feel like a murderer at this point? What a fascinating, real life Raskolnikov style figure.
Later, perhaps much later, he gets strong evidence that the murder was fake. Nothing has changed in the outside world after he learns this -- the victim is no more alive before or after he learns this. Does this change his identity? Is he more or less of a murderer than before?
Do the people who kill with modified Xbox controllers from a warehouse in Las Vegas do the same kind of killing that Ross thought he did?
And then there is some kind of moral thought experiment happening at a Silicon Valley Rationalist, Effective Altruism kind of scale that I can't quite wrap my head around. Do people matter as much in person as if they're just blips on a screen you'll never meet? If Ross could have sent 1 BTC to prevent fatal malaria in a dozen young kids, thousands of miles away, but he didn't, should he feel responsible in some way for their death? Is he about equally responsible for them as for the online people he is pretty sure he ordered killed from afar, but never met?
It's just a lot. The whole story is supernaturally intense; it's hard to believe it was real. It will make for great TV.
See, e.g.
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/murdered-silk-road-employee-... for the faux forum moderator killing
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w... for the other faux five killings (another scam on Ross - he thought he was having extortionists killed? he kept getting confirmations?)
So you can’t agree with the original sentence and then say he “absolutely deserved to be released.”
Without the chance of parole, a pardon from the president is one of the few ways he could get out of jail.
He seems to be denying that he hired hitmen:
I don't like this argument of imputing transitive guilt. If guilt is imputed indirectly, then all of us are guilty of many things, like atrocities that our countries have perpetrated during war.
We need gangster hoodlums on the street because lookie here sonny, an online marketplace is dangerous and if it isn't dangerous enough well feds will make it that way.
You don't need to hire a hitman when someone blackmails you.
A sentence must balance the gravity of the offense with the circumstances of the offender, while still allowing for hope and redemption. A life sentence without parole forecloses this balance.
It's always struck me as odd that the United States - a nation that is packed with far more Christians than Canada - doesn't shape its system of incarceration to be more inline with Christian values and the teachings of Jesus.
Canada's explicit rejection of life sentences without parole (LWOP) through decisions like R v Bissonnette more closely aligns with Jesus's teachings about redemption and mercy. In Canada, even those convicted of the most serious crimes retain the possibility of parole - not a guarantee of release, but a recognition of the potential for rehabilitation that echoes Jesus's teachings about transformation and second chances.
This philosophical difference manifests in several ways:
- In Canada, the emphasis on rehabilitation over retribution is reflected in the term "correctional services" rather than "penitentiary system"
- Canadian prisons generally offer more rehabilitative programs and education opportunities
- The Canadian system places greater emphasis on Indigenous healing lodges and restorative justice practices that align with Jesus's focus on healing broken relationships
- Canadian courts have explicitly recognized that denying hope of release violates human dignity, which parallels Jesus's teachings about the inherent worth of every person
The contrast becomes particularly stark when considering multiple murders. While many US jurisdictions impose multiple life sentences to be served consecutively (effectively ensuring death in prison), the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled this practice unconstitutional, maintaining that even the worst offenders should retain the possibility - though not guarantee - of earning redemption through genuine rehabilitation.
This doesn't mean Canada is soft on crime - serious offenders still serve lengthy sentences, and parole is never guaranteed. But the maintenance of hope for eventual redemption, even in the worst cases, better reflects Jesus's teachings about grace, transformation, and the limitless possibility of spiritual renewal.
The irony is particularly pointed given that the US has a much higher proportion of self-identified Christians than Canada, yet has adopted a more retributive approach that seems less aligned with Jesus's teachings about mercy and redemption.
But hey, you just have to wait for the right president to be elected and you might get your chance. So I guess that's something.
It seems like all of these people they wind up charging probably are questionable people who wanted to do the thing and probably did some other lesser things but they probably would have given up on the big thing if there wasn't a federal agency running around doing all the "the informant says the guy is lamenting not having explosives, quick someone get him some explosives" things in the background.
Why is a terrorist and would-be assassin of a former President getting lifetime supervised release? None of the media coverage of the case, going back years, makes that clear. However, a footnote in the original criminal complaint against[2] him offers a likely explanation:
"In or around the end of March 2022, United States immigration officials conducted an asylum interview with SHIHAB. After the interview was conducted United States immigration officials advised the FBI that SHIHAB may have information regarding an ISIS member that was recently smuggled into the United States."
With a little reading between the lines of the criminal complaint, a very different story emerges: Shihab never dealt with any terrorists. He was a paid middleman between two government informants or agents pretending to be terrorists. He took their money, played along, and ratted them out to INS during an asylum interview. After that, once they realized the jig was up, the FBI arrested and charged him at its earliest opportunity - for the plot they had created and paid him to participate in, and which he in turn had informed the government about.
1. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/columbus-man-sentenced-...
2. https://truthout.org/app/uploads/2022/06/Shihab-complaint.pd...
In hindsight, the prosecution probably wished they didn't do that, since they are said to have had overwhelming evidence and proof, and there is even a Wired article about chat logs pertaining to DPR seeking services, but those are the breaks! If you don't do your due diligence, criminals can be let off on a technicality too!
Unmitigated nonsense. The evidence that he was involved in this is somewhere between unreliable and nonexistent, and he (and the supposed victim) have disputed it since day one. WTF do you mean "openly"?
- Log files found on Ulbricht's laptop with entries corresponding to the murder-for-hire events
- Bitcoin transaction records showing payments
- Messages between DPR and vendors/users about the situations
The court found this evidence admissible as:
- Direct evidence of the charged offenses
- Proof of Ulbricht's role as site administrator
- Evidence of Ulbricht's identity as DPR
- Demonstration of his willingness to use violence to protect the criminal enterprise
The court determined that while prejudicial, the probative value of this evidence outweighed any unfair prejudice, particularly since the government would stipulate no murders actually occurred.
The above is summarized from https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-ulbricht-10
And an indictment is not proof that the allegations are real or not manipulated. US Attorneys are a deeply amoral group, they don't care about truth or justice, just winning at any cost.
He organized and operated a global criminal drug ring and conspired to have people killed. The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.
Asserting moral equivalence between someone who ordered dozens of innocent women and children not just killed but dismembered - solely as a lesson for others. Orders which were actually carried out multiple times and DPR who was never charged, tried or convicted of conspiring with a supposed online hitman to kill a competitor (who both were actually FBI informants - clearly making it entrapment). Yeah, that's quite a reach.
Sure, DPR was no saint but why push for the absolute maximally extreme interpretation? Even asserting he "organized and operated a global criminal drug ring" is a stretch. My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. There is more than a little nuance between 1) buying drugs from distributors, delivering drugs to buyers and collecting the money, and 2) running online forums and messaging for people who do those things. At most, #2 is being an accessory to #1.
Pablo Escobar revelled in it.
PE put bombed newspapers and killed hundreds, if not thousands of people unrelated to any criminal enterprise or to arresting him. I mean, actual innocent, minding their own business civilians. Over 4000 murders have been directly attributed to the actions and orders of Escobar. Estimates to the actual count range closer to 8000.
DPR went over to the dark side a bit in that entrapment racket, or at least it seems so.
Thinking that someone needs to be murdered isn’t necessarily a character flaw, imho.
It depends on what DPR was led to believe about this fictional person. It is reasonable to imagine that the FBI took every possible measure to make their fake victim seem as murder worthy as possible. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that the “victim” may have been painted as a purveyor of child trafficking, CSAM, or other things repugnant. My point is we don’t know. And if we don’t know, we should reserve judgment.
One of these people attempted to place hits on 3-4 individuals, the other one planted a bomb on a passenger plane that resulted in the deaths of over a hundred people.
Get some perspective and/or learn your history.
The only difference?
Because in my opinion the ethics of operating a drug ring is not as black as white as you state.
The existence of drug rings is an inevitable outcome from the war on drugs and I would argue the blame lands on the politicians who maintain the status quo that incentivises the creation of the black market for drugs.
DPR conspired but didn't actually directly kill anyone
Not saying DPR was a good person, but a little perspective is in order
the corruption what we do know about already tainted the case to the point that it should have been thrown out.
I don't care about Ulbricht, and whether he is guilty of all or some of the charges or innocent. What bothers me in this case is that the government can get away and in particular can get its way in court even with such severe criminal behavior by the government.
Rare case when i agree with Trump:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7e0jve875o
"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening."
Trump even personally called Ulbricht mother. I start to wonder whether i have been all that time in blind denial about Trump.
https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...
You shouldn't necessarily change your negative opinion of someone, just because they're right about something. To invoke Godwin's law: Adolf Hitler was a staunch opponent of smoking, in a time when many Allied cultures thought smoking was great, but that doesn't mean you're wrong about him.
Why this person specifically? And why at this time? Perhaps the discussion shouldn't be about the actual subject of the pardon, and perhaps more about the motives of the pardoner...
That said, it was entrapment and everyone involved should be deeply ashamed and prosecuted. At least those two agents did get some wire fraud charges [0], but the entrapment angle got explored because the charges were dropped.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-federal-agents-charged...
Ross was given a life sentence without possibility of parole an incomparable sentence in relation to all other parties that were involved.
"But he was a libertarian!" Shrugs
So many people are in jail for crimes they didn’t commit, or for non-violent offenses that were committed out of hardship and a need to eat.
They gave evidence he tried to have someone killed, and that he saw confirmation it had been done.
Even if the accusation is somehow false and he didn’t order that killing, how many people did he actually kill just by running Silk Road?
I’m so sick of the narrative that aww shucks he’s a good kid from a good family and he just made a boo-boo and didn’t mean to build a multi-billion dollar illicit fortune from trafficking deadly drugs and outright poisons all over the world.
If this dude wasn’t a money-raised white kid from California no-one would care.
People generally don’t get locked up for life even if they do kill someone (in civilized countries), as long as they can be rehabilitated.
The original sentence was two life terms. TO be pedantic, it sounds like you meant to say he deserved sentencing, but not the original sentence.
It is clear as mud. We now know:
* At least four other people had access to the DPR account, by design.
* One of those people (the person whose murder was supposedly ordered, who has vehemently defended Ross!) asserts that he knew that Nob (who we know who was a DEA agent) was one of those four people.
* Nob is a serial liar, and is now in prison for having stole some of the bitcoin from this operation.
...what about that make clear that Ross was within a mile of this supposed 'murder for hire' business?
Just because he was decent with computers does not mean he should be busted out of jail.
I just learned that he was an Eagle Scout.
Not exactly the résumé of someone getting locked up and the key thrown away.