(Photo Courtesy:
LLBG Spotter, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons)
737 MAX Families Use
Tactic From Jeffrey Epstein Victims To Dispute Boeing Plea Deal
By: Christine
Negroni
Relatives of 737 MAX
victims seeking to undo a plea deal Boeing made with the Department of
Justice, will make their case to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland next
week. Lawyers are calling the meeting with the nation’s top law enforcement
officer ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unprecedented’. But in filing court documents
claiming the Justice Department violated their rights when it signed a
deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing, they are following the playbook
of victims of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2008, Federal law
enforcement made an arrangement with Epstein that is similar in opacity to
the deal prosecutors made with Boeing. Epstein was allowed to avoid a trial
and lengthy prison sentence and sweeping immunity was granted to anyone
else involved in Epstein’s crimes, known or unknown.
In the Boeing
deferred prosecution agreement (referred to as a DPA), Justice Department
lawyers concluded without explanation that the company’s misconduct was
limited to a few mid-level pilots but not pervasive or facilitated by
senior management.
That Boeing was
allowed to plead guilty to fraud in exchange for a fine and a promise to
behave better in the future, enraged MAX victims’ families who had been
told all along, and falsely it turns out, that no criminal investigation
into Boeing was underway. They learned about the plea deal only when the
Department of Justice issued a press release when the deal was done.
Naoise Ryan, whose
husband Mick, died on Ethiopian Flight 302 recalls she was in a daze when
she saw news of the agreement on television in Ireland where she lives with
her two young children.
“I remember sending
a message to my lawyer asking, ‘What does this mean?’ It was impossible to
comprehend that this was supposed to be justice or criminal accountability.
It was like our loved ones were nothing,” she told me.
At this point, Ryan
had to stop to compose herself as she recounted the event, explaining,
“It’s upsetting in a way, remembering this now because it puts me right
back. They were treated as though they were cargo, not human beings.”
Prosecutors are
required by law to keep victims informed throughout the process, according
to Paul Cassell the attorney bringing the claim against Boeing’s DPA on
behalf of Ryan and others.
“For reasons we
don’t fully understand, Boeing and the government were trying to get things
wrapped up in early January of 2021,” said Cassell, a criminal law
professor at the University of Utah who specializes in crime victims’
rights. “They were working so quickly to craft a deal that was good for
Boeing, that they didn’t consider the impact on the victims.”
For more than a
decade Cassell has been advocating for two victims of Jeffrey Epstein and
others who participated in the abuse but were given immunity from
prosecution. In both the Epstein and Boeing cases, Cassell says the
government was obligated to keep victims informed as the cases moved
through the criminal justice system but failed to do so.
“The immunity
provisions were part of a secret and illegal agreement,” Cassell told the
court of the Epstein deal. And in language that is similar in theme if not
subject matter, Cassell is now telling the judge in Texas that the same
thing has happened to Boeing’s victims.
“DPA’s facts appear
to have been carefully crafted to downplay the depth and breadth of
Boeing’s crimes,” Cassell writes in his motion to the court. Including the
737 MAX families’ in the process and hearing what they had to say, “would
have presented the Government with evidence exposing the pervasiveness of
Boeing’s wrongdoing.”
The Boeing DPA says
that two test pilots were responsible for deceiving the Federal Aviation
Administration during the certification of the MAX. That allowed a fatally
flawed airplane to be sold into the global airline market. This was one
step along the way to the crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people
in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
But like the Epstein
victims, MAX families are not content – nor apparently, do they believe –
that the wrongdoing was so narrowly confined.
“How can you deny
the facts in the public domain? How can you say there wasn’t widespread
culpability?” Ryan asked, concluding, “Something’s not right here.”
Late last week, Ryan
and others were invited to make presentations to Kenneth Polite, Assistant
Attorney General – Criminal Division. Polite, I am told by several people
who attended the online meeting, was compassionate and engaging. Cassell
said the families asked to talk to Attorney General Merrick Garland and
days later, they were notified that would happen this coming week.
It is worth noting
that Jeffrey Epstein served his 9-month sentence in a Palm Beach County
jail and much of the publicity surrounding his abuse of dozens of teenage
girls had died down but the victims’ rights case filed by Cassell and
attorney Bradley J. Edwards kept moving forward. It can be credited in part
for resurrecting public interest in the Epstein case and ultimately his
second prosecution and incarceration in 2019. Epstein died in a federal
detention center in New York in August of that year.
In December 29,
2021, his former companion, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted for her role in
the serial abuse of children.
So if the Justice Department
can glean anything about the people now asserting the rights due victims
under the law, it is that they are represented by a lawyer who has been
waging this war for a while and appears unfazed by the length of the
journey.
In denying the 737 MAX
families their rights, they have been given a platform to make the case
that Boeing’s lies led to the deaths of their loved ones. They may make
that case in a Texas courtroom and they are already making it in the court
of public opinion.
The question for
prosecutors and perhaps even for Boeing is how long they want that to
continue.
Christine Negroni
Author of The New
York Times bestseller, The Crash Detectives, I am also a journalist, public
speaker and broadcaster specializing in aviation and travel.
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