Roger Thomas Clark pleads his judge for trial delay, claims to have discovered major errors in Silk Road trial
//Anyone interested in reading this letter can find it in PACER using this case reference number (Case 1:15-cr-00866-WHP) (Document 22-1). You need to create a PACER account (free) to access PACER.//
As many already know, Ross Ulbricht’s (Silk Road) right hand man Roger Thomas Clark was arrested in Thailand in 2015 and recently extradited to the USA to stand trial on numerous charges.
At the pretrial conference in January the defense asked Judge William Pauley, who’s overseeing the trial, if the trial date could be moved beyond the initially set trial date of September 23, owing to the need to review that volumes of data “discovery” that the government produced.
Judge Pauley seemed amenable to this request, however he stated that he intended to try this case before the end of the year. He went on to say that “…Mr. Clark has been in custody either here or in Thailand for more than three years, and I’m determined to see that this doesn’t go on ad nauseam.”
In a letter to Judge Pauley dated 3/19/19, Roger Clark reiterates the plea for more time, and argues that his three years in Thailand detention should not count in determining whether delay violates his due process, and states “Any clock concerning my detention by any arm of the American justice system, or any calculation of when is a fair date to set the trial, must be started no earlier than my arrival on American soil.”
He says that of the 8.5+ terabytes of data discovery (equal to 500 million pages, or over 100 library floors worth of books) he’s only been able to study approximately 3% of the discovery material since first receiving it (on two hard drives) in November 2018. He talks about the difficulties involved in getting the data from the government as well as the reticence of the Metropolitan Detention Center to set up facilities to allow him to actually view the data. He was also adversely affected by the 35-day government shutdown, which left him unable to access the discovery material, which is housed in a special room at the MDC and requires an escort for Mr. Clark to access.
Since the discovery material is essentially the same material used during the Silk Road trial, he’s been reviewing the material and trial transcripts and says that he’s already discovered eight major factual errors that have gone unnoticed at Ross’ trial and subsequent appeals. Mr. Clark says “All eight errors were serious, and cumulatively likely would have dramatically changed the course of the Ulbricht trial.”
He goes on to detail one of the simpler errors which involved a Silk Road vendor named Michael Duch being questioned by the prosecution about how much heroin he sold on the site. He said he sold 31,827 bags containing on average 10 milligrams of heroin. The prosecution then calculated that as 3.18 kilograms of heroin and for the remainder of the trial that number was used as proof that the kilogram thresholds for Count Four of Ross’ indictment was met. However mathematically the amount of heroin he sold would’ve totaled 318 grams, not kilograms.
To quote Mr. Clark “So the jury was left with the highly mistaken impression that Mr. Duch sold 10 times more heroin than he actually did, and that such an amount was over 3 times the threshold limit they were instructed they had to find, when in fact it was less than 1/3rd of the threshold limited they were required to determine…The sentencing guidelines are significantly different for 3.18 kilograms and 318 grams, to put it mildly.”
Mr. Clark concludes the letter by asking Judge Pauley to set a date of March, 2020 for submission of motions and September, 2020 for the trial date.
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