Now the prosecution has responded with its own, equally massive document rebutting those arguments one by one, an attempt to put the final seal on the fate of the man behind the dark web's most notorious black market.

In a 186-page brief filed Friday evening, the prosecutors rehash much of Ulbricht's 11-day trial early last year and defend repeated decisions by Judge Katherine Forrest in the prosecution's favor—a series of moves to suppress defense evidence, deny defense witnesses, and admit prosecution evidence that led Ulbricht's attorneys to call for a mistrial no less than five times. But perhaps the most notable rebuttal concerns the controversy over the role of two corrupt federal agents who used their roles in the investigation to extort and steal money from the Silk Road, and whose involvement was kept entirely secret from the jury—and to some extent even from Ulbricht's defense—during his trial.

Here are the prosecution's most important arguments.

Argument: Criminal Feds Are Irrelevant
As the defense outlined in its appeal, DEA agent Carl Mark Force and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges both abused their access to the Silk Road in insanely egregious ways: Bridges used an informant's account to steal $800,000 in bitcoins from the site, while Force attempted to blackmail Ulbricht using one pseudonym while selling him law enforcement information using another. The defense has argued that it wasn't told about the full extent of Force's misbehavior until the trial concluded, and wasn't told about Bridges' role at all.