Lyn Ulbricht, the mother of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, continues hope that U.S. President Donald Trump will help release her incarcerated son.
The request for clemency comes via a Change.org petition that has gained over 100,000 signatures since its launch in mid-2018.
This comes hot on the heels of President Trump's latest taste for pardons over the past year, which Lyn believes will be a ray of hope for the #FreeRoss campaign.
Ross Ulbricht is currently serving a double life sentence following a 2015 court ruling that added 40 years to his time in prison.
The landmark event in law enforcement was the product of a 2013 operation that led to the arrest of the Silk Road admin, whose operations had fueled America's drug crisis in the eyes of the authorities.
Lyn Ulbricht's Latest Statements
Lyn's words were captured in an interview by Yahoo Finance UK in which she claimed that despite Silk Road's reputation, her son did not operate the platform with an intention to cause harm-he was just responding to his basic instinct of curiosity as far as free markets and online privacy is concerned.
Ross Ulbricht's mother will not give up on her son if her latest sentiment is anything to go by.
The 64-year-old Texan strongly believes that her son's sentence was unjust and that Ross was only a victim of circumstances.
This argument stems from the fact that the Silk Road founder's case occurred at a time when authorities had moved launched an ambitious war on drugs.
Specifically, Lyn claims that she almost died of "broken heart syndrome" after witnessing the sentencing of the once-powerful dark web operator.
Furthermore, according to her own account, the tragedy of her son's predicament has cast a shadow on her entire family.
Lyn is adamant that Ross's sentencing was a "fake hit" and a "set up." To this effect, she has vowed to fight to ensure that her son's sentence is reduced accordingly.
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By now, the role of the Silk Road darknet market in drug trafficking has become common knowledge.
Its application of cryptocurrencies in the sale of substances is also factual to criticisms that have been leveled against the dark web underworld.
Still, the debate about Ross's sentence largely remains to be a contentious issue. One side of the bank maintains that the man deserved the punishment that he has endured.
On the other hand, a host of arguments point to the U.S. judicial system for having made an unnecessarily ruthless decision to lock the man without any chance of parole.
Lyn has always played center pivot in efforts to advocate for the clemency of her son. It is through this motivation that she opened a Change.org petition that called for Ross's clemency.
The petition highlighted concerns that touched on opinions about the harshness of the sentence despite the non-violent nature of the crimes.
In fact, Lyn contends that her son did not deserve the connotation of a "kingpin" as spelled by court charges.
She argues that her son's sentence failed to justly correspond to the nature and magnitude of crimes that he committed.
The Question: Will Trump Grant Ross the Much-Sought Clemency?
At this point, it is difficult to predict Ross's fate as far as presidential clemency is concerned.
Initial murder-for-hire charges, which had a significant impact on the direction of his case, have been dropped.
It was alleged that Ross had arranged for the murder of a blackmailer, including other persons.
Among the claimed hits involved an undercover agent that staged a photograph of an assassination.
Lyn since came out to discredit the charges by maintaining that a third party must have logged into Ross's "Dread Pirate Roberts" account (his online alias at the time) in his absence.
This, she said, stemmed from knowledge of her son's pattern and style of writing, which conflicted sharply with the chat logs presented by the case.
Nonetheless, Lyn indicated that her son was coping well in the Colorado prison where he is serving time and is optimistic that he will one day walk out of the gates of prison as a free man.
