Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht raises notable sentencing issue in SCOTUS cert petition

As detailed in this new Reason piece, headlined "Ross Ulbricht Files Appeal to the Supreme Court on His Life Sentence Without Parole: Silk Road founder's appeal stresses the dangerous Fourth and Sixth Amendment implications of his prosecution and sentencing," a notable federal criminal defendant is bringing some notable issues to the Supreme Court via a new cert petition. The full cert petition is available at this link, and here are the petition's seemingly simple questions presented:

1. Whether the warrantless seizure of an individual’s Internet traffic information without probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment.

2. Whether the Sixth Amendment permits judges to find the facts necessary to support an otherwise unreasonable sentence.

SCOTUS gurus know that the first question intersects with issues in the pending Carpenter case, and that fact alone might make this high-profile case a poor vehicle for getting to the post-Booker sentencing issue also raised. The petition, notably, suggests "It would be most efficient for the Court to resolve the question presented in this case now, while it is considering a related question in Carpenter."

SCOTUS gurus know that the second question is one that has been repeatedly avoided by SCOTUS since its Booker-Rita rulings wherein the late Justice Scalia suggested that, even within the advisory guideline system created by Booker, there must be some Sixth Amendment limits on findings by judges to justify lengthy prison sentences.  Despite pushing the matter, Justice Scalia could not garner enough votes for this Sixth Amendment issue to be addressed by the full Court on the merits before his untimely demise.  I am not really expecting a different reality now, although Ulbricht's lawyers astutely notes in his cert petition that Justice Scalia's replacement has previously suggested concerns on this front:

Shortly after Justice Scalia’s opinion in Jones, then-Judge Gorsuch similarly observed that “[i]t is far from certain whether the Constitution allows” a judge to increase a defendant’s sentence within the statutorily authorized range “based on facts the judge finds without the aid of a jury or the defendant’s consent.” United States v. Sabillon-Umana, 772 F.3d 1328, 1331 (10th Cir. 2014) (citing Jones).  Three years later, however, that question re- mains unanswered by the Court, despite intervening opportunities to address it.

A few prior related posts on sentencing and appeals of Ross Ulbricht:

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