NEW YORK (PNN) - January 3, 2015 - The trial of Ross Ulbricht, accused by the fascist federal government of running the Silk Road "dark web" site on the Internet, kicks off on Monday, January 5, in New York City. Libertarians see the trial as yet another unjust victimless crime prosecution.
Jury rights activist James Babb issued a press release Friday announcing a month-long jury nullification campaign in the area around the Fascist Police States of Amerika Courthouse in Manhattan to coincide with the Ulbricht trial. The protest will feature large phone kiosk advertising posters in the area while an army of activists distributes nullification pamphlets in an effort to educate people about their rights and responsibilities as jurors.
A grassroots Indiegogo crowd funding campaign launched in December and scheduled to run through February 5 has already raised more than their target goal. "Early support has come from libertarians and redditors," George Donnelly of the Jury Rights Project/NYC explained on the Indiegogo site. Because of that, six kiosk jury nullification posters are already prominently posted, ringing the area around the courthouse.
While the immediate goal is to support Ulbricht, the long-range objective is to end victimless crimes prosecutions in the city in 2015. Many will remember that former Penn State professor Dr. Julian Heicklen was repeatedly arrested and sent to jail or to psychiatric hospitals for distributing Fully Informed Jury Association outreach pamphlets at this same Manhattan courthouse.
The 30-year-old Ross Ulbricht faces life in prison as the alleged creator and operator of "Silk Road," an online marketplace that was shut down by the fascist feds in 2013. Silk Road, according to Reason Magazine, was a secretive "darknet" site operated as an online commerce website like Amazon or Yelp, where people around the world could anonymously buy and sell non-legal drugs and have them delivered to their door by their country's postal service.
Reason summed up the issue this way: "Whatever you think about all that, Ulbricht's trial is about more than the feds shutting down a site that allowed people to buy and sell drugs. It intersects with all sorts of issues related to state surveillance, burden of proof, and whether ISPs and marketplace sites can be held liable for the actions of users."
Since the online exchanges were voluntary and apparently satisfactory to most users, libertarians insist that there can be no crime, since there is no victim. That makes the Ulbricht trial a perfect case for nullification. As FreeRoss.org puts it, this case "will impact the future and freedom of the Internet and our First Amendment rights."