Silk Road—wasn't that the massive, online drug bazaar?

If you read the latest documents filed in the case, you might think it was a methadone clinic or "harm reduction center."

As part of an upcoming sentencing hearing, the government has laid out plans to show evidence of six drug overdose deaths it believes are directly connected to the website, which allowed users to buy pretty much any illegal drug.

Lawyers for Ross Ulbricht, the 31-year-old convicted as being the "Dread Pirate Roberts" who ran the website, say those six deaths "should not contribute in any manner" to Ulbricht's sentence. They laid out their arguments in a 13-page motion (PDF) filed late Friday.

A defense medical expert found "gaping holes in each death investigation," including missing autopsy reports, toxicology reports, and death certificates. One alleged overdose death was an "overweight 27-year-old black man" who may have suffered a stroke. Another death prosecutors attribute to Silk Road is a man who recently suffered from bronchitis and had his cause of death listed by the medical examiner as "aspiration pneumonia."

As with many overdose deaths, the six "decedents" here were taking multiple drugs that could have come from multiple sources, Ulbricht's lawyers state. "The government cannot even establish to any degree of certainty that any of the drugs ingested came from Silk Road," they write.

Today, US District Judge Katherine Forrest published an order asking prosecutors to respond to the filing, and querying whether they want a hearing on the issues. She also asked for information from both parties about how often Silk Road narcotics were sold in "personal use quantities" as opposed to "resale quantities." Ulbricht's sentencing is scheduled for May 29.

Responsible marketplace

In the motion, Ulbricht's lawyer, Joshua Dratel, argues that the Silk Road website was a pioneer when it came to keeping drug users safe.

"[T]he Silk Road website was in many respects the most responsible such marketplace in history, and consciously and deliberately included recognized harm reduction measures, including access to physician counseling," he wrote. "Transactions on the Silk Road website were significantly safer than traditional illegal drug purchases and included quality control and accountability features" that kept purchasers "substantially safer" than regular drug purchases.

Ulbricht's lawyers include declarations from several experts in the field of drug policy and harm reduction.

One is Tim Bingham, an Irish researcher who authored three papers about the experience of Silk Road users, explaining how the site's community formed a "nested support system." In an attached declaration, Bingham says he "did not encounter a single drug user whose first drug purchase was on the Silk Road website."

Also included is a declaration from Meghan Ralston, who until last week was director of Drug Policy Alliance. Her declaration describes her belief that Silk Road was a "safe environment, free of weapons and violence during the transaction." She continues:

Many reformers, myself included, have long been highlighting the forward-thinking benefits of Silk Road and the ways it began to slowly revolutionize drug sales around the world. For instance, it provided a platform that could allow indigenous growers and cultivators around the world to sell directly to the consumer, potentially reducing cartel participation and violence... None of the transactions on Silk Road, for instance, resulted in women drug buyers being sexually assaulted or forced to trade sex for drugs, as is common in street-level drug transactions. Nor did any Silk Road transactions result in anyone having a gun pulled on them at the moment of purchase.

Dr. Silk Road

Most striking in the new filings is evidence provided by Dr. Fernando Caudevilla, a Spanish physician who was active in the Silk Road forums and eventually was paid by DPR.

He advised the site's users under the name "DoctorX," although he says he freely gave out his real name to anyone who asked. Caudevilla spent two to three hours a day on the site's forums, ultimately sending more than 450 messages to Silk Road users before the site was shut down. He conversed with users about everything from safe dosages of drugs to particular combinations to avoid.

In his declaration, Caudevilla testifies that the site "espoused a harm reduction ethos which was reflected in the individual buyer-seller transactions on the site and in the community created on the site's forums." That community "enabled some site participants to reduce, if not entirely eliminate, their drug use."

Caudevilla participated on the Silk Road forums for seven months and states that he "never came across even a single report of a Silk Road-related drug overdose." Ulbricht's lawyers point to the lack of such a "report" as a telling fact, although one wonders which section a user who had overdosed was expected to post in.

DoctorX had a direct relationship with Dread Pirate Roberts as well. He sent weekly reports to the man in charge. After working on the site on a volunteer basis from April through August of 2013, Caudevilla informed DPR he'd have to cut back, as the site was taking too much of his time. DPR offered him $500 per week to keep giving advice about harm reduction.

"Well... that is very generous from you," wrote Caudevilla in a private message to DPR. "For that help I would maintain my thread up to date answering questions in 24-48 hours as a maximum delay and also answer all PM in 24-48 hours maximum."

"I thus continued my work on a paid basis from mid-August 2013 through October 2013, when the site was shut down," writes Caudevilla in his declaration.

Ulbricht's lawyers continue to deny he was DPR at all, and say they'll appeal the results of his trial earlier this year. A jury took less than four hours to convict Ulbricht on seven counts related to drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering. His faces a possible life sentence.