This is a highly recommendable text from Mr. Ken White from Popehat in which he explains how Federal Prosecution works using the recent Silk Road raid as an example.

There’s no indication that the murder occurred or that the murderer was an undercover, so it may have been a scam by the purported murderer. The presence of the murder scheme in the New York complaint is entirely gratuitous to support holding Ulbricht without bail and make him look menacing, even though it may actually signify that a purported criminal mastermind was duped by fake murderers in two separate countries. Federal criminal justice is like that.

Mr White also delivered a very interesting IAmA at Reddit six months ago:

I think the federal guilty plea rate is in the 90-95% range, with the remainder being trials and the occasional dismissal or other resolution.

How bad is that? This is really, really bad, because this means the forces that may shape and influence laws are not applying. How will we know how facts are proven in court if the court is not hearing them?

Also on Aaron Swartz:

Third part: As a defense attorney, what’s frustrating is seeing so many smart people devoted to the idea that Swartz was singled out for unusually harsh or unfair treatment. He wasn’t. People get treated just as badly, or worse, by the federal system all the time with zero attention. And the federal system is like the motherfucking Ritz Carlton compared to the state system.