Ross Ulbricht Was Pardoned. His Mom Can't Forget The Ones Who Weren't.
Lyn Ulbricht is showing America what we lose when a country forgets its principles.
Another day, another ride on the merry-go-round of civilization, where problems repeat every few generations as the same lessons must be learned. The American criminal justice system is a particularly tragic example.
Integrally invited me to speak with the founder of MACS, Lyn Ulbricht—Ross Ulbricht’s mother and unrelenting advocate for his pardon—about a key threat to our justice system today.
Ross Ulbricht was given two life sentences plus 40 years without parole for his involvement in the Silk Road, a true free-market e-commerce site where what consenting adults bought and sold to each other was their business, so long as no third party was harmed. Meanwhile, convicted murderers and criminals with a long history of violent crimes have received far softer sentences, only to later murder innocent people, as in the infamous case of Iryna Zarutska.
The judge Ross faced—Katherine Forrest—explicitly said she intended to “make an example” out of him, and despite having no criminal history or being convicted of any violent crimes, she sentenced Ross to die in prison.
Libertarians have followed Ross’s case since the start because of the egregious difference in how the justice system treated him due to his belief in free markets.
In Judge Katherine Forrest's mind, Ross was a worse criminal than the drug dealer who sells poisoned fentanyl to the neighborhood kids because Ross wasn’t simply acting out of greed and ignorance like the neighborhood dealer, but out of a moral conviction for individual freedom, which she described as “a privileged argument.”
A highlight of Trump’s current term was the pardoning of Ross (I was in the audience for his second public speech; it’s a painful reminder of what the world loses when cruel sentencing puts good people in cages for too long). And yet, the problem that led to Ross nearly dying in prison is still just as much a problem. To complicate things, we’ve seen more examples of activist judges intentionally giving light sentences to violent but “underprivileged” individuals, enabling them to harm innocent people, and ultimately drive such understandable outrage in some Americans that they resort to broad support for the kind of cruel sentencing Judge Forrest applied to Ross.
This is the merry-go-round we ride when society isn’t bound by principle: overly harsh sentencing leads some people to apply overly light sentencing, which then leads some people to once again apply overly harsh sentencing.
People wrapped up in this vicious cycle easily forget what history shows us: once a government has the power to weaponize cruel sentencing, it rarely gives that up easily. The Founding Fathers knew this danger well, being of a time when whipping, branding (yes, the kind done to cattle), and death by hanging were common punishments for crimes like pickpocketing, poaching rabbits, or cutting down a tree on someone else’s land under mid-18th century British law. America stands apart from brutal authoritarian regimes and dehumanizing monarchies because of a core principle in our Constitution:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
This is the principle both those seeking overly light and overly harsh sentencing undermine in different ways, and it’s the principle Lyn Ulbricht is working to uphold.
⏱️ Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:47 Are criminal justice reform attempts likely to do more harm than good?
2:28 Is it more important to properly punish criminals than avoid punishing innocent people?
3:30 Is harsh sentencing needed to deter criminal behavior?
4:18 Harsh sentencing impacts more than just the person sentenced
4:46 How the Drug War in the 80s led to harsher sentencing
America isn’t special because of its geographic location, but because of the ideals that shape what kind of society grows in that location called America. Ideas matter, especially when they can lead to non-violent people dying in prison or being killed on their commute home from work.
I’ve partnered with Integrally on this series because this app invites us to think more deeply about our ideas and use our free speech to find rational, actionable solutions to our problems. Integrally facilitates anonymous, constructive disagreements that get evaluated on the quality of their reasoning rather than their popularity. It’s great for testing your own ideas through disagreement and refining your debate skills without drama, outrage, and irrationality. Join me there to discuss the ideas Lyn shared and more.
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