I love it when non-legal people report on the legal system, get a ton of shit wrong and then point at the system and say how broken it is.
First of all, Federal indictments are almost always granted to the prosecutor. This lead to the now famous quote from the story about a ham sandwich. This is the because of the Supreme Court case United States v. R Enterprises, Inc:
"federal grand jury subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable and the burden of showing unreasonableness is on the recipient. A motion to quash a federal grand jury subpoena on relevancy grounds must be denied unless, “there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will produce information relevant to the general subject of the grand jury's investigation.”
All a grand jury does is determine if there is enough compelling evidence to try a person for a crime, that's it. To say those charges have been dropped is misleading. All the prosecutor has to do is reinstate the indictments and they can proceed with those charges. They didn't "fall off the table" like the article states, the government hasn't formally charged Albrecht yet - something which could happen if he walks in his other case. Just because the government is dragging its feet on these charges doesn't mean they don't intend to charge him.
Like I've said before, the murder charge is essentially an ace in the hole for the prosecutors. If he walks on the Silk Road charges, they can pursue their murder charges against him and reinstate all the murder indictments and formally charge him with those - it's pretty simple. The article makes it seem like the government has dropped all the charges and thus, he's innocent of what he's been accused of. On the contrary, the writer simply is misinformed about how the legal system works.
If you're going to present yourself as more knowledgeable than the rest of us as far as the law goes then it would be prudent to read the article and get the defendant's name correct.
Given that the information that would implicate him in Silk Road might very well be from the same area as the alleged murders then one can reasonably assume if he walks on the SR charges then he could also potentially walk on those charges.
In response to your comment about the indictments, is it not also possible that the jurisdictions that obtained the indictments (because they're so easy to get as you say) doesn't actually have sufficient evidence to present even a prima facie case or perhaps the information they did obtain was obtained illegally and thus they don't want to lose on those counts so to save face they drop the counts? Perhaps it is as the author states where the indictments were used to obtain a no-bail status so Ulbricht doesn't flee (assuming he has other funds hidden elsewhere).
All of what I said is what some folks (myself included) in the non-legal world would consider to be "reasonable doubt."
This whole case hinges on the fact that Ross Ulbricht = Dread Pirate Roberts. All of the government's evidence claims Ulbricht ran Silk Road and he's the person who ordered several assassinations. All they know is the person "known as" Dread Pirate Roberts did these things, so they need to tie DPR directly to Ulbricht.
Therefore, if the servers were searched illegally, then whatever was on those servers is important to Ulbricht, which means they're important to DPR, which then the government can tie the two together and make the direct relationship between them. This means even if he wins the Silk Road case, the government have established him as DPR and then can formally charge him under the several indictments they have for the murder for hire scheme.
If he doesn't challenge the search of the servers, and maintains since he's not DPR, then he has no stake in the evidence on those servers, then all the evidence (fairly strong circumstantial evidence) would stand and the government will most likely get a conviction since even though they haven't tied him directly to the DPR persona, all the evidence from the servers and other circumstantial evidence points directly to him. I say "most likely" but you never know for sure in these cases.
Contrary to what you believe, getting evidence thrown out in one case, actually solidifies the evidence in the other case. Also, it's likely the government is preparing their case to be ready to charge Ulbrict depending on what happens in the SR trial. Since Grand Jury's are a closed affair (defendants and their attorneys are not present) it's a dry run for the prosecution to see how strong their case is. They could be sitting on additional information, or still in the process of collecting more evidence against Ulbricht, you never know. There's a LOT we the general public won't know about their case until they actual charge him and have to start providing the evidence they have.
First of all, Federal indictments are almost always granted to the prosecutor. This lead to the now famous quote from the story about a ham sandwich. This is the because of the Supreme Court case United States v. R Enterprises, Inc:
"federal grand jury subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable and the burden of showing unreasonableness is on the recipient. A motion to quash a federal grand jury subpoena on relevancy grounds must be denied unless, “there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will produce information relevant to the general subject of the grand jury's investigation.”
source: http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/federal-gra...
All a grand jury does is determine if there is enough compelling evidence to try a person for a crime, that's it. To say those charges have been dropped is misleading. All the prosecutor has to do is reinstate the indictments and they can proceed with those charges. They didn't "fall off the table" like the article states, the government hasn't formally charged Albrecht yet - something which could happen if he walks in his other case. Just because the government is dragging its feet on these charges doesn't mean they don't intend to charge him.
Like I've said before, the murder charge is essentially an ace in the hole for the prosecutors. If he walks on the Silk Road charges, they can pursue their murder charges against him and reinstate all the murder indictments and formally charge him with those - it's pretty simple. The article makes it seem like the government has dropped all the charges and thus, he's innocent of what he's been accused of. On the contrary, the writer simply is misinformed about how the legal system works.