Judge Forrest absolute nailed this, in her withering response to one of Ulbricht's appeal attempts:

- "“No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court,” she said. “It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did.”"

https://www.vice.com/en/article/unsealed-transcript-shows-ho... ("Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht’s Life Sentence" (2015))

In an increasingly nihilistic world, I'm glad people like Forrest still exist.