On the most recent episode of The Tatiana Show, host Tatiana Moroz opened with an interview with Lyn Ulbricht, leader of the Free Ross campaign, to deliver some recent updates with the struggle to petition the carceral state for his clemency. Ross Ulbricht just completed his NTH year of a double life sentence, plus 40 years, as a first-time, nonviolent offender. On the anniversary of his incarceration, his mother described some of the contentious events that helped to put him in jail, the conditions he is living under now and some of the efforts that are still ongoing to set him free.
Allegations that the Silk Road was used as a “murder for hire” platform were used to justify his extreme sentence, despite the fact that all charges related to alleged instances of murder for hire were dropped before ever going to trial. In turn, the astronomical length of his sentence has been used to place him in a maximum-security prison, where he has been at risk of being targeted by violent offenders. Lyn claims that, as a result of this threat, he has spent the last two weeks in solitary confinement, a practice widely condemned as inhumane and torturous by the United Nations and the international psychiatric community.
Lyn went on to state that Ross is just one of the 17,000 nonviolent drug offenders serving life in prison across the many prisons of the United States, a number that has quintupled due to the drug war despite all evidence showing that the availability of drugs has only increased in this time.
When looking at the massive rates of nonviolent incarceration from the perspective of a potential source of nigh-unpaid labor, it should be easy to see why Lyn said that “our government is engaged in human trafficking.” The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is very clear when it states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, except, it clarifies, as punishment for a crime.
Lyn invites all of her audience to sign the petition available on her website, freeross.org, and to spread the word about her grassroots initiative.
Tatiana also interviewed several other interesting guests this episode, including Rafael Hauxley, who traveled around the world spending only one bitcoin; crypto advisor Frederick Steinmann; and BTC Inc.’s own Head of Sales Operations Chris Ely. The full interviews of these other guests, as well as many others from Tatiana’s and other shows, are all available now on the LTB Network.