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Silk Road Founder Challenges Conviction, Life Prison Sentence

NEW YORK (AP/CBS) -- A San Francisco man who created the online drug-selling website Silk Road asked an appeals court in New York on Wednesday to toss out his conviction and life prison sentence.

Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced in May 2015 to life imprisonment after his February 2015 conviction for operating the darknet website for nearly three years until his 2013 arrest.

Silk Road
Screenshot of Silk Road, a black market marketplace of drugs and other illegal services. The website has been closed after the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht in San Francisco on October 1, 2013. (CBS)

Ulbricht's defense attorney, Joshua Dratel, maintains that Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest unfairly excluded from Ulbricht's trial information about corrupt investigators.

Dratel says the judge also blocked him from introducing other evidence that would've helped Ulbricht. He says the judge was unreasonable at sentencing, holding Ulbricht responsible for six overdose deaths linked to Silk Road.

The defense attorney wrote in papers submitted to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that Ulbricht deserves a new trial and sentencing by a different judge.

TM and © Copyright 2016 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2016 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Bay City News Service contributed to this report.

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