Crash victims’ families formally object to proposed Boeing plea deal
In this post last month, I asked “Could families of crash victims disrupt the latest plea deal Boeing has accepted from the feds?”. I now see via this post by Paul Cassell over at The Volokh Conspiracy that he has helped file “a motion for the Boeing 737 MAX crashes victims’ families, asking the district judge to reject the plea deal that the Justice Department and Boeing have negotiated.” Here is the lengthy motion’s introductory statement:
Boeing’s lies to the FAA directly and proximately killed 346 people, as this Court has previously found. ECF No. 116 at 16. And yet, when the Government’s and Boeing’s skilled legal teams sat down behind closed doors to negotiate a plea deal, that tragic fact somehow escaped mention. Instead, what emerged from the negotiations was a plea agreement treating Boeing’s deadly crime as another run-of-the-mill corporate compliance problem. The plea agreement rests on the premise that the appropriate outcome here is a modest fine and a corporate monitor focused on the “effectiveness of the Company’s compliance program and internal controls, record-keeping, policies, and procedures ….” Proposed Plea Agreement, Attachment D, at ¶ 3. And as a justification for such lenient treatment, the plea agreement relies on an incomplete and deceptive statement of facts that obscures Boeing’s true culpability.
The families object, as the Crime Victims’ Rights Act gives them the right to do. See 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a)(3) (giving victims’ representatives the right “to be reasonably heard” regarding a “plea”). The families respectfully ask the Court not to lend its imprimatur to such an inappropriate outcome. Indeed, the families’ first objection is that the Court would not be allowed to make its own determination about the appropriate sentence for Boeing but merely to rubber stamp what the parties propose through a “binding” plea deal under Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(1)(C).
In the pages that follow, the families provide eight substantial objections to the proposed plea, including its deceptive factual premises, its inaccurate Sentencing Guidelines foundation, and its inadequate accounting for the deaths Boeing caused. This Court has previously stated that when it has authority “to ensure that justice is done,” then “it would not hesitate.” ECF No. 186 at 29. This proposed agreement is not justice. The Court should not hesitate to reject it.
Prior related post: