Separate courts. He was indicted and tried for all the non-murder stuff in a New York federal court. He was indicted separately in a Maryland federal court on a murder-for-hire charge.

The New York court convicted him, and then considered the murder-for-hire allegations when determining his sentence. They found them true by a preponderance of the evidence and and that was a factor in his sentence to life without parole. He appealed, and the Second Circuit upheld the sentence.

The prosecutors in Maryland then dropped the murder-for-hire charge because there was no point. They said this would allow them to direct their resources to other other cases where justice had not yet been served.

'preponderance' is the clue, criminal is 'beyond all reasonable doubt', civil is preponderance. Ross was being charged under criminal law.

Possibly because he was already facing a long sentence and it wasn't worth pursuing that charge.

this would be a criminal charge preponderance of the evidence wouldn't be enough to convict