alt Hacker NewsThis opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case.
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
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This opinion (after appeal) also details how they taken into consideration with sentencing. See pages 130-131
https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_o...
That's a nice end-run around “innocent until proven guilty”: they didn't have to prove anything about those allegations beyond making them, because he wasn't charged with them.
The first person in the murder-for-hire allegations 'FriendlyChemist' was an undercover DEA agent or informant, and it's strongly possible none of the other people existed. It's also conjectured the hitman account 'Redandwhite' was being operated by the same DEA agent [*]. Moreover the bitcoin DPR sent the supposed hitman 'Redandwhite' sat in the wallet from 3/2013 till 8/2013, "which alone should have tipped out DPR about a possible scam" ie. that the killing never happened [0]. DPR never requested any confirmation pictures of at least 5 of the (fictitious) killings, nor was there any Canadian media coverage to suggest anyone got assassinated on the supposed dates.
The US Attorneys made a lot of publicity out of the murder-for-hire conspiracy allegations against Ulbricht in their indictments and in pre-trial media ("although there is no evidence that these murders were actually carried out." as the indictment itself obliquely says).
Ulbricht's defense could have come up with a plausible alternative explanations that he knew redandwhite was a scammer trying to extort him with a story involving nonexistent people, and was just playing along with him for whatever reasons.
[*] If the prosecution had not actually dropped those charges at trial, it would have been confirmed at trial which of the six identities were fictitious/nonexistent and whether all the accounts were managed by the same DEA agents. Hard to imagine that at least one juror wouldn't have formed a skeptical opinion about government agents extorting a person to conspire to kill fictitious people (why didn't the indictment just focus on nailing him on the lesser charges?). If this wasn't a Turing Test on when is an alleged conspiracy not a real conspiracy, then someday soon we'll see one.
ArsTechnica covered these facts in 2015:
[0]: "The hitman scam: Dread Pirate Roberts’ bizarre murder-for-hire attempts. On the darkweb, no one is who they seem." 2/2015 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/the-hitman-scam-...
[1]: Silk Road’s alleged hitman, “redandwhite,” arrested in Vancouver https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/silk-roads-alleg...
It's surprising to me that the prosecutor is allowed to essentially insinuate crimes to influence the jury, without the need to prove them. That seems to undermine the process because it creates a "there's smoke so there must be fire" mentality for the jury.