I knew that speech was going to be deep and sad but never thought I'd cry a lot
[especially for the first half]. It's quite annoying to see
[repeatedly] a "broken system" giving punishments of that extent to someone that had
[and still has] a completely different motive than the one they're portraying
[things like this is what make me lose my faith in humanity].
I'll end my post with some of the lines from Ross's speech
I'm a non-violent first-time offender but if nothing changes, I'll spend the next few decades in this cage, then sometime later this century I'll grow old and die. I'll finally leave prison but I'll be in a body bag.
The caricature they created was a violent drug lord that is not who I am, that is a lie. It's a lie that was carefully crafted to justify keeping me in this cage until I die. It's a lie designed to turn you against me, to turn your heart off. They lied, it's on the record. They cheated, that's on the record. They stole, two of them went to prison over to doing. They hid evidence, that's on the record. They destroyed evidence, that's on the record. They planted evidence, that's on the record. At one point, they were looking into how they could give me the death penalty; They wanted to inject chemicals into my veins that would stop my heart.
The irony is that I made silk road in the first place because I thought I was furthering the things I cared about; Freedom, privacy, equality but by making silk road, I wound up in a place where those things don't exist.