Boeing Killed 346 People. So Why Did They Get a Sweetheart Deal?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:52 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1019. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and joining me today is Matt Cameron. How are you doing, Matt?

0:01:00 Matt: I'm reaching a cruising altitude and I think I'm about to release my trade tables.

0:01:03 Thomas: Right, well, you've got your pilot voice down. Also joining us on board the cabin is Casey. Welcome back, Casey.

0:01:06 Casey: Thank you for having me again.

0:01:11 Thomas: Is our pleasure. It is so nice to get to have not one expert in criminal law, but two, and we're gonna use that expertise today to break going to talk about the different kind of plea deals you can get when you're, you know, just a person versus a multi -billion dollar corporation, for example. But first we're going to take a little ad break if you would like to avoid the ads, go to patreon.com/law. Thanks so much to those who pledge and support the show, and we will see you after this break. All Right, Matt, corporations are beautiful, my friend, and still they want a good plea deal after they've done something really criminal, and then they're, then they're back to to being corporations, I think, the sweetheart deal that they get. And what do normal people get?

0:01:53 Matt: Well, normal people under our system don't really want to end up with a criminal record if they can possibly help it, because as we all know, criminal records lead to all kinds of consequences for your life. Especially for a first -time offender, prosecutors will work with you in many cases to enter what we call a diversionary plea. So I want to start by talking a little bit about that and how that works. Districts. Much all jurisdictions have some kind of diversionary process. And we talked about it a little bit in the context of Azul's case, where she was given a diversionary agreement. And of course, unfortunately, as is usually the case, the diversionary argument still counts as a conviction for federal purposes. But for all state purposes, you get to say that you have not been convicted of a crime once the probation ends.

0:01:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:15 Thomas: Why?

0:02:28 Thomas: That distinction, like, would, what's the federal, look at it differently than state? Are you convicted of something? What is it?

0:02:35 Matt: So because the federal definition for immigration purposes is literally just, you have entered any kind of admission of guilt and you have a penalty, which is probation is enough. That's a restriction on your liberty. So that's enough. Federal government wants to find everybody who might possibly be able to be deported. So that's good for people not born here.

0:02:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Well, let's pretend we're not an evil fascist system trying to deport everybody. What, again, I know we've probably covered it, but the basics of a diversionary plea, how you, is it different than pleading guilty? It exactly look like?

0:03:03 Casey: I think that we're talking about like different categories of things which will go, which through, like, and to be honest, I wouldn't normally use the word, that phrase, "diversionary plea," like, to me a diversionary program means generally a pre -arraignment diversion away from the criminal justice system. But for these purposes, my understanding is that we're talking about things that include things like continuances without a finding or pretrial probation, right? We would call a continuance without a finding in is an admission to sufficient facts. So, what that means basically is that you admit that the government has facts sufficient, evidence sufficient, to prove you're guilty if you went to trial. You acknowledge that, but you don't actually enter a plea of guilty. Jurisdiction has some version of this. Some places, I think, might call it pleading no contest or or something similar I

0:03:44 Thomas: Oh yeah. I've heard of pleading no contest. That's the same thing.

0:03:48 Casey: Uh

0:03:49 Matt: Basically, yeah. No, it's just like, got you me basically. Like you're not admitting or just, you know, because

0:03:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You're like, man, this trial is going to be no contest. Like you guys, it's going to Be, man. You're going to kill me. I got nothing.

0:03:59 Matt: Not that one.

0:03:56 Casey: Yeah yeah And there's... there's like another type of plea that sounds that will sound similar to you that I can talk about in a second called Alfred please, um, Know about Alfred Please, okay.

0:04:09 Thomas: Oh yeah. I Yeah. We've covered that a little bit, it's but just another different form of pleading guilty. There's so many different ways.

0:04:16 Casey: An admission of sufficient facts isn't actually a guilty plea, though. Like, you're admitting that there are facts sufficient, and a guilty plea doesn't enter. And like I said, in this jurisdiction, what enters is a continuance without a finding for a period of time. Then the case is held open for that period of time, and at the end of that period, it's dismissed. Although I'm going to say there is a caveat to that, which I'll tell you about in a second. So the case is held open for a specific period of time, which generally in most, normal, like, courts would be, know, you six months or a year or two years or something like that. And then if during that time period, if you commit another crime, or if you fail to meet your conditions, if there are conditions of of your probation, and there aren't always, sometimes it's just literally just an administrative probation where you pay your monthly fees and just Don't commit any Other crimes, yeah.

0:04:57 Thomas: Fees? What? Are the the fees like

0:04:59 Casey: Generally have to pay probation fees and You can Get those waived

0:05:02 Matt: So you are on probation during this entire thing.

0:05:04 Thomas: Membership Fees, exclusive probation club. It really sounds like the justice system being like, all right, double or nothing. If you if you commit no crimes, then okay, you win. But if you commit another crime, then we're double, right? The justice sistem wins double, huh?

0:05:20 Casey: Yeah. If You commit another crime, they can, the case can be reopened and a guilty plea can enter, um, you can be sentenced on on that case. Um, big caveat on this is that when we say that the is held open for a period of time, it's continued for a period of time without a finding of guilt and then it's dismissed, that's technically true. That's what it will say on the person's, what we call a BOP, or a CORI, but essentially their Criminal, their criminal record, so We call the BOP a board probation record, or CORI, criminal offender record information, I guess, but it's essentially a criminal record.

0:05:20 Matt: Yeah. Pretty much.

0:05:42 Thomas: BOP? Or what? I thought we were doing like, uh, slang or Something and Bob's your uncle And The got it in the quarry in the, yeah, yeah.

0:05:54 Casey: Yeah, sort of like that. Yeah, there's all sorts of, fun yeah, terminology like that, I assume most states probably do, I would assume. Yes, so at the end of that period, like I said, technically it is dismissed, but the big caveat is that, well, two things, one is law enforcement in the courts can see that record, so it's not like that case just goes away and there's no record of it, it's it's always going to be there, and it can be used for things like arguing bail in the future if you commit future crimes, and it can be Used, uh, like the way Matt said, for immigration purposes, obviously, because it's considered a conviction, but it can also be used for for instance, if let's say it's an operating under the influence case or something like that, it can be used if you commit another crime like that, it but will qualify as a prior conviction. If you go out and you operate under the influence, you get your COIF, your continuance without a finding, the case is so-called dismissed at the end of that time period.

Complete that period of administrative successfully, but then you pick up a second OUI. That first first operating under the influence continuance without a finding will count towards your second offense. And so you will not be a first offender at that point. You will be a second offender potentially.

0:06:05 Thomas: Okay.

0:06:23 Thomas: Kind Makes sense, though. It's like, all right, we're giving people maybe the chance to have a one-time mistake, but then if it turns out like, oh, it actually wasn't a one time mistake, Then it's like, well, screw you now. We're gonna, we're gonna pun it, we're going to retroactively go back and treat that first one as though it was part of a pattern, okay.

0:07:08 Casey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:07:11 Matt: Right. As Casey was saying, there's a special one for law enforcement when they look at your record, but if you're just going to have an employer or your school look at a record or, you know, for housing loans or whatever, that will not be an issue. It will come up clean. Oh, excuse me. I'm not going to say that. It Will Come Up Without a Record. That is an important part for your life, right? Obviously, you don't have to check the box. It says you have a conviction.

0:07:27 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:07:35 Casey: -hmm.

0:07:35 Matt: So that is the benefit from it.

0:07:36 Casey: You have have to to be be careful with the, that those types of questions are phrased, right? Because sometimes they types of questions will say things like whether you have been arrested, charged with crime, a client, or convicted of a crime, or arrested, convicted of crime, or had you against you in a court, or, you know, something like that.

0:07:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:53 Casey: So You have to be careful to, depending on how that's phrased, I

0:07:53 Thomas: I Person who's had something like this. Like, how easy is it to keep track of, like, OK, well, I haven't been convicted for the purposes of this, but I have been convicted for the purpose of this, and I can't answer yes to that. You know, like, that seems really confusing.

0:08:10 Casey: People really, a lot of people, really, when that it's going to be dismissed at the end of that period, that that means that nobody can see that. And so when they come into court and they've been picked up on something else and they have a bunch of these on their record, I think incorrectly people assume that there's just no record of that in some cases.

0:08:27 Matt: Tell me all the time, well, it was dismissed. It's fine. You don't have to worry about that. We didn't even have to get the records for that. And I have to tell them, no, the federal government has to see this because they don't think it's dismissed as far far as they're concerned. It was a very important distinction.

0:08:29 Casey: Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, these are usually like period of six months, a year, sometimes two years. Me earlier that there used to be a judge out in one of the courts that I was in that would continue cases without a finding for a couple of minutes, an hour.

0:08:51 Thomas: What?

0:08:53 Matt: Wait in the courtroom.

0:08:54 Casey: So You'll Occasionally see things on criminal record that will say, you know, COIF one minute, COIF one second, yeah.

0:08:54 Matt: Don't commit a crime.

0:09:02 Thomas: What? Why? What is that?

0:09:03 Casey: Uh, It's because you can't just dismiss outright a case without a legal basis to do that. If if you're a judge, and in this, like I said, I can only think of one person really that would do this, this is not a common thing, if you for instance disagreed with a case being being prosecuted, but there wasn't a legal basis to dismiss the case, one way you could make the case go away rather quickly would be to continue without a finding for a very short period of time and then dismiss the case at the end of that period.

0:09:32 Thomas: Oh, so it's a judge doing a good thing. Possibly.

0:09:33 Casey: Yeah. It depends, I think. I mean, usually it is for pretty, the things I could think of, I think, would, were assume, were pretty minor, minor things, I

0:09:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:43 Matt: The likelihood of you being arrested during those 30 seconds to five minutes are, you know, it's pretty low. So you're in good shape.

0:09:47 Casey: Yeah.

0:09:47 Thomas: Would be funny if you were the one guy who was like, just try to steal something from the vending machine. Oh man, this is embarrassing

0:09:50 Matt: Yeah. You got me.

0:09:51 Casey: Yeah, getting a fight, like, in the hallway, which, you know, things, things that happen sometimes.

0:09:56 Thomas: Yeah wow

0:09:57 Matt: So I know that everyone listening has heard of the concept of probation, but I just want to talk about it for a second just because Massachusetts invented it. We're very proud of that. We invented the entire concept of probation. There was a bootmaker named John Augustus who moved down to Boston from Woburn and set up a bootmaking business and just started going to court and seeing if he could help people with drinking problems because he was a membership of the Washington Total Abstinence Society. And he believed that you could rehabilitate alcohol abusers. So in 1841, yeah, just a good swift kick. Yeah.

0:10:07 Thomas: Really? Huh. Oh. Using Boots? Or here? Try these on. I swear it's really gonna help. It seems weird, but I

0:10:33 Matt: Court and He first billed out a common drunkard, that was a charge you could have at the time, and the first probationer ever was a common drunken. Basically, if you'll give me a chance, I can turn this guy around, I'll bring him back. He appeared three weeks later a different guy, apparently, because Augustus was letting this guy live in his house and just hang out and become a better person and work Through his alcohol. Yeah, it is. Course is a far crime for what probation is today, because today it's a very sort Of institutionalized, faceless system with all kinds of issues. But back then, the idea, which was very nice, is that you could have individually members of the community step forward and support you and agree to help you out so that you Could rehabilitate and reform, form, which used to be something people talked about as a purpose of the criminal justice system, strangely enough.

For about 18 years, and he actually was responsible for the first actual probation act, that first statute that actually put this into effect shortly after his death in 1859. And we've had it ever since. I believe we give it to more people than any other state. I could be wrong about that, but we love probation. Our probation department is very has a lot of power in the state. It's gotten into its share of troubles, of course.

One point, there was actually a direct fax line from the statehouse to probation where you could just get your cousin Sully a job. They could just fax over, and they were just just giving out jobs at probation. That was one of the many scandals that probation got caught up in the

0:10:42 Thomas: Love it. Huh.

0:10:56 Thomas: That's kind of cool. I

0:11:52 Matt: Last, well, yeah,

0:11:52 Thomas: A Scandal. Well, that's not a bad scandal. I thought it was gonna be like a, you know, how long until this was like, you know, Willie Horton ads or whatever, where it's like somebody was on probation and they killed somebody, so therefore, you death penalty for everybody kind of thing. I imagine it gets politicized. Oh,

0:12:07 Matt: Know, I mean, generally people around here don't seem to have a big problem with probation as a concept. I'm not going to say it works because it's got all kinds of problems like every other part of the system, but it has to be better than incarceration under any circumstances. So everybody.

0:12:17 Casey: Yeah... I mean, Yeah, it's the majority. It's the vast majority of sentences in this state. I mean, I assume that's probably the case in most states. I'd surprised if it wasn't, I

0:12:26 Matt: We'll learn, major corporations don't have to go on probation, but people do. So you want to talk about Alford police real quick? I know we've acknowledged them.

0:12:32 Casey: So Alford Pleas, basically, and Alford Pleas is very similar to what I just described an omission of sufficient facts. But in that case, a guilty plea actually will enter, but the individual, the defendant, still protests their innocence, right?

0:12:46 Thomas: Yeah, that's right. So it's when they, you want to plead guilty for like, you know, because the justice system is railroading you possibly, but you're like, I don't think I'm guilty, but I don't want to get screwed over.

0:12:48 Casey: Yep. I mean, that's that's basically it. Is I that you admit that the government has enough evidence to convict you if you went to trial. Enter a plea of guilty, but you do not actually acknowledge that you are, in fact, guilty. The plea still has to be voluntary. Actually went all the way up to the Court on, you know, I guess, not surprisingly, the case of an individual named Alford.

0:13:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:18 Casey: Last name, Henry Alford, 1970. in And it went up to the Supreme Court. It was an individual that pleaded guilty, I think, to second -degree murder in North Carolina because he wanted to avoid the death penalty, potentially. And then, so he got 30 years in prison. He said that he wasn't actually actually guilty. Is a very quick summary. Appealed and he said that he'd been pushed into a guilty plea because he was afraid that he might be sentenced to death otherwise. And the Supreme Court said, no, an acceptable type of plea. The defendant has to be advised by a a competent lawyer, who is able to advise him on his choices in the case and advise advise whether this is the best choice to go with.

0:13:31 Thomas: Right.

0:13:58 Thomas: So was he trying to get the whole thing thrown out? Like, ah, I was forced to plead guilty. And then the court kind of found a way for him to still be guilty. Like, no, we don't, we'll, we 'LL let you still be Guilty, even though you don't think you are and that'll be fine. And we'll name it after you. What an honor.

0:14:05 Casey: Well, yeah. Yep. Yep, he pleaded. Yeah. It's actually a funny story about something like that. So basically the Supreme Court says that, no, you can do these types of pleas if think it's in your best interest. If you've been advised by an attorney who is a competent individual, like, that this is in fact a good decision or at least a decision that's in your best interest, and there also has to be, um, strong evidence that would support the state's case, the government's case. Um, this, this is something that is allowed in, in most states. I think there are three states where they do not allow Alford pleas, because states aren't required to allow these, right, but they, they can, and I think the only states that don't recognize them are Indiana, Michigan, and New Jersey. Um, yeah, they're not very common, at least not here, like.

0:14:53 Thomas: Got a question. Wouldn't every single defendant, if they were going to plead guilty, why wouldn't they want to be like, hey, can you just let me do an Alford thing so I can say I'm innocent?

0:15:03 Casey: I think there are a couple reasons. One is that, um, judges won't always accept pleas like that, yeah. Um, judge would have to be willing to accept the plea, and they're not always willing to do that. Terms of why they, this might not be a good idea, is because if down the road, if you're getting a significant sentence of some kind and you haven't acknowledge responsibility, you haven't taken responsibility, that's going to be a problem for getting parole, so that's the reason why most, maybe not most people, but I think a lawyer might advise some people that if you want to be parole eligible in the future, you're going to have to take responsibility for the crime that you're, you're entering a guilty plea to.

0:15:22 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Right.

0:15:36 Thomas: Yeah, it's interesting. It's like that Sam Bankman Freed guy. I haven't gone to the details, but it seems like he got a harsh sentence because he just didn't acknowledge they did anything wrong. So I guess that principle I of like the system does tend to want you to be like, yeah, OK, you got me.

0:15:36 Casey: Mm. -hmm. Yeah.

0:15:50 Matt: Do get credit. Related to that, we were talking about this in the context of Eileen Cannon, she would not allow the defendant's family to be there for jury selection and close the courtroom. Man actually ended up taking a conditional plea, which is pretty unusual, but it does happen sometimes. In that case, presumably with something to do with the courtroom closure or some other aspect of her judging, he was going to reserve the right to appeal. But if you have a motion to suppress or something like that, that you're still working through maybe that you think might have a good chance that maybe it'll win an appeal, you can still reserve the Right to Appeal certain aspects of the case. That's not typical.

0:15:59 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

0:16:20 Thomas: Oh, if you plead guilty, then do you just by default, you give up the right to appeal and

0:16:25 Matt: Is the deal you're making almost always. Convenience of the system. In terms of diversionary stuff, there have been some experimental efforts within lifetimes, which I think are very positive. You might have heard about drug courts. We also have veterans courts, which are sort of completely separate within the court system. Yeah, they're great. We should talk about drug court.

0:16:38 Thomas: Actually haven't heard of these. I should

0:16:42 Matt: I want to get an expert in and talk about them.

0:16:43 Casey: So

0:16:43 Thomas: Do drug course. I should use drugs. Let's do it.

0:16:44 Matt: Yeah. There's a lot to talk about with drug courts, because again, they they're recognizing that people with substance abuse issues are working in a very different kind of criminal culpability than people who don't. And same with people with PTSD that arises directly from military service. So we have veterans courts that address that. And these are diversionary programs that can actually work closely with people. And just the little bit I've seen of drug courts, very impressive. It doesn't feel like regular court at all. It's much more cooperative and feels like the judge is on your side and trying to help you in

0:16:56 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:17:16 Thomas: It's super chill, too, you know.

0:17:18 Matt: Yeah. Well, literally, I mean, compared to regular court, it certainly seems like it because everybody just kind of wants you to get better and do better, which should be the goal of, I think, most criminal prosecutions. But

0:17:20 Thomas: Yeah. Judge has a Grateful Dead shirt on, you know, it's it's all it.

0:17:29 Matt: Yeah. Get regular smoke breaks. Yeah. Courts and veteran courts, that's something we should just do another show on because that's a really good development. I want to talk a lot more about reform and ways we can actually make some of this work. Work. We should also mention there's the idea of pretrial probation, which I think exists in all jurisdictions as well, which is where you don't admit any guilt. There's no admission to sufficient facts, but where you just get placed on a period of probation before anything else happens. It can actually happen before the arraignment, so before the case even goes into the court, you can take pretrial probation, but typically it's after.

0:17:36 Thomas: Yeah. Huh. So? What does that do?

0:18:03 Casey: Would mean that there's no, there's no admission to anything, right? Like so for Matt's purposes as an immigration attorney, that's really good, right? Because you at most on your record will have an arraignment, but you haven't admitted to doing anything, like in, in any way you haven'd pleaded guilty, you haven', haven't acknowledged responsibility for anything. You just, you get placed on probation for a period of time, and then the case gets dismissed if you successfully complete that probation. If you don't, then the cause gets put back onto the docket, and the case goes forward, and you have to resolve it one way or another. You have to either plead guilty or, you know, go to trial.

0:18:37 Thomas: You know, thing would be between like you're charged with something but you haven't even pled at all, so you're just like, is that what it is? Mm.

0:18:44 Casey: So pre-trial probation generally is that you get charged, you're, get brought into court, you get arraigned, and then what you negotiate with the prosecutor has to agree with this, at least in in this state, um, after you've been arrained, at some point you come to an agreement with the prosecution to put the defendant onto probation for a period of time without any sort of finding of guilt or acknowledgement of guilt, um, or anything else, and then at the end of that period, if you complete that, then the cases is actually, you know, for real dismissed. There's no, no sort of finding, it does not count as a conviction for any purpose. Yeah.

0:18:53 Thomas: -hmm. Okay. Oh. Wow, right.

0:19:16 Matt: Short short of a dismissal for my clients and for anybody. It's pretty good. Something that usually we associate with people like Jeffrey Epstein, but we'll talk about that in a bit. Yeah.

0:19:17 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Oh, God.

0:19:22 Casey: Well, did you want to talk about, about diversion though, because there's also pre -trial diversion, and that's, that's a little different, like talk about, I guess, juvenile diversion, right? So that's a at the moment. And basically what that means is it diverts a juvenile from being prosecuted at all. So this would be prior to being arraigned.

So generally, I think it would mean that the individual might have been charged, instead of getting arraigned, instead of being brought into court, I think it's some cases instead of even being charged, you essentially participate in a program of some kind. You get assigned a caseworker or something, along those lines, to work with you.

Have to pay restitution if there's restitution involved, you to take accountability for what you've done, but you don't do that in court because again you haven't been arraigned, and usually involves an educational program of some kind that at least it's run by the DA's office. At the end of that period, if you do all those things, then the case goes away, and you don's have anything on your record, you don' have an arraignment, there's because literally is not a record, it, it

0:20:18 Thomas: Is some of the amount of this just like of prosecutorial discretion, prosecutors can kind of do a lot of this stuff with it? Because some of it sounds like you're at such an early phase that it's sort of like, all right, you, you behave, then we'll just not even go forward with this. Or is it, does it have to be like a formalized thing, you now, that's like written into law, otherwise you can't do things like these, uh?

0:20:39 Casey: Like some pre -trail diversion programs, like what Matt mentioned about the veterans court and the drug courts, that those are written into statute, um, lot of it has to do with prosecutorial discretion though, so the prosecutor, the prosecutors, the DA's offices don't have to do any of these things, um, can choose to, to agree to it. They can choose not to, especially when it comes to juveniles. They can set limits on the types of juveniles that eligible for these types of diversionary programs, right? So, you, they can say if it's a case involving victims, if the victim does not agree that they are willing to have this happen, then we're not going to do it. Yeah, I do think generally there's usually some sort of framework. And again, I don't want to speak for like other, other states, because I genuinely don't know, but I think there's generally some sort of framework that allows for it, but a great deal of discretion is vested in the, the prosecutor in terms of whether to forward with this type of program and how to implement it.

0:21:09 Thomas: Right.

0:21:28 Matt: Outcomes we're talking about are not available in major felony cases.

0:21:31 Casey: No.

0:21:32 Matt: There's limitations, right? It's going to be in the smaller stuff. And generally speaking, on first time, but not always.

0:21:33 Casey: Yes. Yes,

0:21:32 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So why are we talking about this? Is I been charged with something? Oof.

0:21:41 Matt: Story actually came to us, Lydia found this a couple months ago, and it's been stuck in my head. And it's actually become a lot more relevant, unfortunately, for reasons we'll talk about out by the end here.

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0:23:19 Matt: Think some people might be familiar with some of the basics of this, but I just want to take you through. And part of the problem with a lot of white collar crime and a lot the things that end up with the kind of disposition we're going to talk about is that they're often so complicated to explain that your eyes close over as you're trying to think about what the person actually did or what the company actually did. It's very easy to explain a drug ring and sort of the chain of command and what kinds of drugs they were distributing and where, where they went.

You know, explaining how Boeing killed 346 people by covering something up takes a minute to explain. But the end of the story is that they killed 347 people by covering something up. That's the important thing to remember. And what they covered up was the fact that they had taken the 737 and turned it into the 7 37 max. I mean that's known obviously. The 737 max Became one of the best-selling planes of all time. Boeing time.

Essentially covered up how many changes they had made to the plane, because if they had to disclose all of the changes they'd made, there would have had to be at least a million dollars per plane in new training for pilots. So they would have had to put them through flight sims. They would have to explain a lot of these things that were going on in the new plane. So, they encouraged their engineers and their pilots to downplay this as much as possible and to make sure they only had to go into what's called a Type B training, the one where you basically can do it on an

0:23:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:29 Matt: iPad. You can just kind of click through and figure this stuff out.

0:24:28 Thomas: I'm Sure a lot of the audience will already be familiar with this, and we won't go too broad into the details, but it was, yeah, essentially, so like they want to upgrade their plane, but if they do it too much, there's regulation that says like, well, then you have to train everybody on whatever's different, so they're essentially fudging it a little bit to be like, well, it's close enough that you don't have to do that. And there, don't worry, there will be zero bad consequences to this decision.

0:24:53 Matt: Yeah, and they also wanted to focus on selling these planes to less developed countries. So they wanted to cut costs wherever they could. Yeah, that's part of it, too. And they put the engineers at double the normal pace, tight deadlines, strict budgets, and Boeing generally. So I have to say, I'm from Washington State, or I grew up in Washington State. And Boeing was something we could be proud of. Like it was a company that I remember driving past that plant all the time and just thinking about, you know, how cool it was that we had one of the only two commercial airline companies in the world, right?

0:25:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:02 Casey: Wait,

0:25:19 Thomas: And you just thought someday I'm going to be in an immigration lawyer.

0:25:25 Matt: I'm going to talk about this on a podcast.

0:25:29 Matt: But yeah, I mean, so Boeing, I always had a very good impression of it, but it's not doing itself any favors in the last few years with some of the sloppy stuff that's been coming out. Because they have been under new management. They a lot of these things. They haven't been as concerned about listening to engineers. They've been more concerned about bottom line stuff.

0:25:45 Matt: They'd been outsourcing a lot things they used to do. I mean, this is really very much kind of the whole story of what Cory Doctorow calls the inshittification of America, right? Of just having all these different things not be as good as they used to be, not be has much quality control as we used to have. So in this case, shitification. I think that's helpful.

0:25:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Stock price. Yeah, yeah,

0:25:59 Casey: What was the phrase that you just used? The Oh,

0:26:03 Thomas: Yeah. No, I've heard that. I think it's just another word for capitalism, yeah.

0:26:03 Casey: I had not heard that. Got it.

0:26:04 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, equity in particular, really doing the real damage here. Private equity has a lot to do with what happened here. But what they had to do because of these new engines they were strapping onto the 737 MAX is they invented something called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System and MCAS. It wasn't very well designed because there was only one sensor that could trigger it. So I heard a pilot saying that essentially like a mylar balloon or a bird could trigger it. And because of the new engine with more force, the was more likely to tip up. And the MCAS would correct that by automatically causing the airplane's nose to pitch down, which, as you can imagine, may be not so good, especially if

0:26:10 Casey: They

0:26:41 Matt: Pilots couldn't be a problem, right? It's just a, you know, just nosedive. What's wrong with that? And again, these are pilots that don't know about this system and have not been trained on it.

0:26:41 Thomas: Has any bad consequences, yeah. That's what kills me like I get that you're cutting the corners for the all that, like, that sucks. Um, like on that iPad training, there couldn't have been that, like, what, I forget, there's some reason they didn't tell pilots. But really frustrating yeah they didn't tell them? Wow.

0:26:51 Matt: Yeah.

0:27:00 Casey: Really didn't tell them?

0:27:02 Matt: No. They would have had to put them into flight sims, and it would have really increased the cost of everything, and it makes it less attractive as a plane to buy, because you have to retrain your pilots, right? And they were really trying to aim this at the major airlines, and to give them an affordable option for a faster, more fuel -efficient plane.

0:27:05 Casey: What?

0:27:17 Casey: It also nosedives at random. Him.

0:27:18 Matt: Yeah, yeah, you know, some trade -offs you're going to have. And those trade -off, of course, resulted in two major crashes within about five months of each other. There 29th, 2018, a Lion Air crash out of Indonesia. Boeing, at this point, we know from the litigation, knew what was going on at this point, but they blamed the lower standards of Indonesian pilots, essentially just saying these people aren't as good at flying.

0:27:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:42 Matt: Yep. And then March 10th, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines crash goes down. And at that point, the 737 MAX is grounded for quite a while while they investigate this. And between those two two crashes, 346 people died, who did not have to die, based I on

0:27:22 Casey: Wow. Wow, it's so gross.

0:27:57 Matt: What we know about all of this. You And, know, even in the last few months, I Think we've all heard the stories about there was the Alaska Airlines panel that ripped off mid -flight back in January.

0:28:06 Thomas: I Think this is one of those stories that most people are actually aware of, you know, sometimes we're talking about some obscure gear stuff, but this stuff, even though flying is so safe, you know, largely it's like these, these things scare the hell out of all of us for some reason, to the point where it's like, I don't have any flights planned anytime soon, but I'm like, shit, what, do I need to check what plan? I don'T think I've ever paid attention to who made the plane before, but now I'm like, ah, I DON'T really want to go on these planes, and

0:28:09 Matt: That's true. Yeah, it is.

0:28:29 Matt: Might want to check. Yeah. I mean, I'm hearing engineers now just doing the research for this, multiple engineers saying they wouldn't to fly on some of these planes as long as these issues are still there. The 787 has its own set of issues too, but we're not talking about that today. There have been, even in just the last few months, Boeing has not done well with any number of things that have happened. What this comes down to is a process called a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, which sounds at first glance kind of like the things we're talking about up top, about a continuance without a finding about just sort of admitting to sufficient facts and moving on and not having a record. And that is kind of what it is, but this is really only available to corporations. This is something that is used to keep corporations out of trouble. And I think

0:28:38 Casey: Well,

0:28:54 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:29:09 Matt: It's worth putting a lot of attention on.

0:29:09 Thomas: So why? Because like, yeah, I get it. Like, obviously, we can think of good and bad cases for a lot of these things. You know, you give someone a second chance and oh, it turns out they suck and they shouldn't have had it. But you can also think of the opposite. Someone really needed that second chance. And maybe, you know, they shouldn'T if it's drugs, if it'S whatever, they shouldN'T even be in the criminal system at all. But a corporation, I don'T care about like a corporation. I don't look at them and be like, Yeah, but look at the old pictures of that corporation playing youth you know? And just like that corporate, at that innocent corporation. We can't punish that, you Know? It had everything. It's like, it's a really good swimmer. That corporation is really good at swimming. I'm not going to punish it.

0:29:24 Casey: Had

0:29:38 Matt: Right. Right, right.

0:29:49 Casey: Everything going for it.

0:29:50 Thomas: Yeah, but it's corporation, who cares? They should make a special jail for corporations. Oh my God.

0:29:51 Matt: Yeah, yeah. Well, this is also a corporation that happens to be one of our largest defense contractors. So there's that. There's also the fact that at the end of the day, the federal government doesn't want to hurt corporations and the Trump administration in particular when it came to this deal. This deal, by the way, was filed January 7th, 2021. Not a lot going on that week.

0:30:14 Thomas: Wow.

0:30:14 Matt: I'm sure it was fine. Yeah, kind of got under the radar there. Few weeks of the Trump Administration, they were determined to close this deal before Trump got out of office because they thought it'd be good for Boeing stock prices specifically. They thought it would be good to have this kind of win on the way out because they were it, as we'll talk about in a minute, is something that was actually a lot of punishment. But going through it, it's really not. This is very common now. And they're offered really without too much resistance, without too much trouble. And obviously, white -collared criminal defense lawyers love these because nobody goes to jail.

0:30:15 Thomas: Hmm. Oh yeah, you can kill hundreds of people and it's apparently fine.

0:30:45 Matt: Yeah. No. And I mean, we talked last week about Charles Littlejohn disclosing tax records that the public needs to see and doing five years, is the max available for that. Of course, I mentioned Jeffrey Epstein, he was subject to a non -prosecution agreement, which is very similar to a deferred prosecution agreement, except it doesn't even go into the court. It doesn't have to be filed with the court, it's why the terms were secret for so long. And we all know what Jeffrey Epsteins did, he did a lot more than releasing tax returns, and he pled to one count of soliciting prostitution, I think it was, got home confinement that he got to pay for with his own people and just hang out in his house.

0:30:51 Thomas: Oh. Right, yeah, unreal.

0:31:17 Thomas: Unbelievable. Yeah.

0:31:21 Matt: Just want to make sure people understand just different levels of our justice system, the difference between what you'll see when you go into the Lowell District Court here in Massachusetts and what you're going to see when you're Boeing. Because generally speaking, the system doesn't care that much what your life circumstances are if you commit a drug offense, a drug distribution offense, for example. Example. We want to do everything we possibly can to keep these executives, particularly the executives, safe and make sure that they don't have any long-term consequences. So this Deferred Prosecution Agreement is available to read. We're going to link to it in the show notes. I think everyone should take a look at it.

0:31:25 Thomas: Are

0:31:54 Matt: There's also, yes, Rebecca Bowling.

0:31:54 Thomas: You talking about Boeing now, or okay. Yep. Yeah.

0:31:57 Matt: Jeffrey Epstein is too, and I think I should link to that because I think people have some idea. But the Jeffrey Jeffrey Epstein agreement, just to make this very clear, was negotiated in a way that is incredibly unusual. And not only allowed no one that he was conspiring with to be prosecuted, excuse them, excuse offenses that weren't even known about yet, excuse anything they might happen to come across, potentially his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, who may or may not have been involved in.

0:32:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:16 Casey: Yeah, well,

0:32:17 Thomas: I was gonna say am I remembering right, or was Dirsh involved and uh, yeah, he was somehow involved unreal

0:32:23 Matt: No, he was. He was. And they did this whole deal kind of like off -site, which is very unusual for the Department of Justice, like an hotel room somewhere they They just met and hashed it out, agreed what the facts would be, and got this. I mean, it's considered to be the worst plea deal of all time, like the most ridiculous.

0:32:26 Thomas: Yeah

0:32:37 Casey: I mean, the worst plea deal for the government.

0:32:39 Matt: Yes. And for justice, right? In terms of, yeah.

0:32:40 Thomas: Really?

0:32:42 Casey: So did he actually, I guess what I'm wondering, Matt, is when he actually plead guilty to something? Epstein, Boeing, did they plead guilty? Did they plead to something and then, or no?

0:32:47 Matt: Agreement, yes. So the federal government issued a non-prosecution agreement saying that he would not be subject to any federal charges if he pled in the state court to this one solicitation offense. So on their end, it was a non prosecution agreement, didn't have to be filed with the court, promising him that he would never face the many, many, many federal charges that he should have been up for, for international child trafficking. But non-prosecution agreement does actually have to be filed with the court, and it does actually require that a indictment go into the judge. So this is somewhat public in a way that the nonprosecation agreement isn't. It's still incredibly lenient, obviously, but judge can't really have a say in it. That's the other part of it. Even if the judge thinks that it's unfair or that it is just ridiculously lenient,

0:32:56 Casey: Okay. Got it. Okay. Wow. That is crazy. Wait, Wow.

0:33:27 Thomas: Right.

0:33:28 Matt: Is case law on this because judges have tried. And even in this case, the incredibly conservative judge that the Trump administration put this in front of in the Northern District of Texas, Northern District Texas, where Boeing does not have... Obviously, their main plant is in Seattle. They do business as a corporation in Delaware, and their corporate headquarters are in Chicago. They have no connection to the Northern District of Texas, except I guess the Plains land there sometimes. And the Trump administration went shopping. You usually think of defendants doing judge shopping, right? But they wanted this disposed of as quickly as possible, and there is no question why they did this. They went to a judge named Reed O'Connor, the who judge who found that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional. And he's consistently made conservative rulings and favored whatever the conservative people in front of him want. So then he'd be easy to work with. They also knew that the U.S. Attorney in that jurisdiction named Erin Neely Cox was well -known to be a corporate -friendly person.

She actually went on to work at Kirkland and Ellis just about six months later. Kirkland and Ellis actually, if you're familiar, is obviously a very large firm that has a lot of crossover with the Department of Justice. They kind of go back and forth between the two. Bill Barr was working at some point at Kirkland & Ellis just before he was nominated.

Of the people in the top of Trump's Justice Department were working at Kirkland & Ellis and or go on to to work at Kirkland & Ellis afterward. The people actually that signed off on the Jeffrey Epstein agreement went on to help negotiate the Boeing agreement. This is on the defense side.

0:33:57 Thomas: Wow. Jeez.

0:34:54 Matt: He had signed off at it as a prosecutor, and then he goes to do a similar thing on behalf of Boeing. So this is how it works at the top levels. This Is the stuff we don't get to see.

0:35:01 Casey: Wow.

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0:36:27 Casey: Think that's the thing that's really different when you said a few minutes ago that, well, if you look at how people are treated in the low district court as opposed to here, I mean, I think the truth is is that most people in in the law level courts here are, you know, I mean, the case is the big difference is the fact that people, most people are not going to jail in the district courts here, and they're not, they're getting hammered with like horrible sentences. Things like these diversionary programs and pre -trial probation, continues without finding, continuances without finding are extremely common, right? Similar diversion programs a little bit less so, but they're becoming more popular. The big difference is to the fact that a case like this would never be eligible in a state level court that I know of for for a program like this. That's what's so unusual about it.

0:37:08 Matt: Major fraud that killed people.

0:37:10 Casey: Yeah, I mean, that's just what's, that would not, when Thomas asked before about whether or not you need to have statutory frameworks for this sort of thing, I guess I would be very surprised if any of our statutes allowed for a disposition like that, where people had died as a result of a defendant's actions.

0:37:25 Matt: I wouldn't think. I would not think.

0:37:26 Casey: Like, that is really strange.

0:37:28 Thomas: Just still blown away by the government doing, doing the court shopping or the judge shopping, that is just, that's crazy, put

0:37:31 Matt: Yeah. It's disgusting. Yeah, no. And it's just, that says a lot about the politics, especially, and again, this is, we're end of the Trump administration at this point. And by the time it was filed, literally the last weeks of the administration. So, you know, I guess that says something about where they're at, what they're doing. The DPI itself, as I said, we'll link to it, but it was a three-year term. Now, the difference, as I said before, between this kind of an agreement and continue to the finding is that you're not actually even on probation when you take this three-year term. It is an option that they could impose monitoring, which is very expensive. They decided that there are all kinds of reasons that they didn't think they needed to monitor Boeing in this case.

0:37:48 Casey: So

0:38:08 Thomas: Like an ankle monitor on the plane, we're keeping an eye on you. Oh, we knew where you were anyway, that seems kind of redundant, but plane has to blow into a thing before it takes off? No, oh,

0:38:11 Casey: They just literally just wait for time to pass? So

0:38:11 Matt: Yeah, no, they just wait for three years to pass. And that actually, that ended on January 7th of this year. And there's a six -month period after that three -year period in which DOJ decides what else they might want to do. So that ends in July. Yeah,

0:38:32 Thomas: Wow, so would, I was just gonna ask, like, did it end before this door thing happened, and if it did or it didn't, like, what, what would qualify as like, all right, we're sending you back to airplane prison? You,

0:38:44 Matt: That's a very good question because the Alaska Airlines door thing happened on the 4th of January, and this expired on the 7th of January. And apparently DOJ is looking into criminal charges over the Alaska airlines thing because that was so negligent with the bolts there. So, that actually could trigger something potentially, maybe, if there's any intention to actually hold anybody accountable at this point. And the families are also trying very hard to have DOJ do something at this moment. The families, of course, have, in these cases, never get fair shakes. And we'll talk about what happened with them as well.

0:39:16 Thomas: The American family members of, you, both of those flights, I mean, I assume they would have had some number of Americans on, or is it like internationally they're trying to, you know, like non-citizens are trying, like, how does that work? I don't know. Who's, who are the, yeah, it's everyone. Okay.

0:39:29 Matt: It's everyone. It' s everyone. Yeah,

0:39:30 Casey: Yeah.

0:39:30 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:39:31 Matt: It's hard.

0:39:31 Casey: There were like, I think, eight Americans maybe on the Ethiopian Air flight. I'm not sure if there were any on the Lion Air flight. Um, I tend to think, to be... and this is very like cynical of me, but I think that it wasn't like a niece of Ralph Nader's on the Ethiopian Air flight, and whole thing is extremely sad, but it's interesting to me that the point at which they pull it is when there's a flight with a number of on it, including someone who's related to someone fairly well known, whereas with the Lion Air flight, they just kind of were like, well, I don't know, maybe you don't have very good pilots in Indonesia, even though you're an island nation, you have to fly, you know, between the various

0:39:34 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. If anyone

0:40:03 Matt: Yeah.

0:40:05 Casey: Islands every single day just to get to other parts of your country, but... But I don't know. And truthfully, I don't know. Who knows? Maybe Indonesia did have problems with air safety. But it just strikes me as interesting.

0:40:05 Thomas: Has good pilots. Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:14 Matt: You're right, though. Nader, being who he is and knowing what he's famous for, he actually did speak out against this after his grandniece was killed. She was 24 years old. He made a lot of noise about this at the time. I don't know if that made a difference, but yeah. But at that point, you've got two crashes that appear to be related to the same thing and you've gotta ground the plane and that's what happens.

0:40:23 Casey: Yeah.

0:40:30 Thomas: I feel like they would've grounded anyway, But still, like, the idea that you do have to have Americans aboard for us to to do it, like it really shouldn't matter, like obviously it shouldn't matter, But

0:40:38 Casey: Mm -hmm.

0:40:39 Matt: Well, even the fact they were cutting corners on a plane that they wanted to sell to developing countries, right? I mean, that just says it all too.

0:40:42 Casey: Yeah. That' s so bad.

0:40:45 Matt: So the the DPA, again, good for three years. We'll talk about kind of where this is going maybe, but I just wanted to go through a couple of the things that are in there. One thing I thought was interesting is, just like in any sort of pre -sentence memo, the DPA actually summarizes Boeing's criminal record. The company has a criminal record already, so it looks at its priors.

0:41:02 Thomas: Yeah, held up a liquor store when it was 17, yeah.

0:41:05 Matt: Yeah, I was hanging with the wrong companies. Companies. It was convicted in '89 for illegally obtaining military planning documents. Apparently they just kind of let that go. Was a previous non-prosecution agreement relating procurement fraud and at least one civil FAA settlement. Honestly, not too bad for a major company that produces things that kill people. I just thought it was interesting that they have to address their criminal record. And then there's a long section about why we're not going to impose monitoring, probably just because they didn't want it.

The resolution at this point under the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, so this is a little deceptive, that I'm relying in part on a great law review article that I'll link to from John Coffey, published a couple of years ago. It's called Nosedive, Bowing and the Corruption of the Defrid Prosecutions Agreement, and he lays this out very well.

He makes the point that that the damages in this case, the penalties that they're imposing are illusory because they came out and said, well, it's a $2.5 billion settlement, which sounds pretty good, except million of that settlement was actually a criminal penalty, which is about 10% of the total. And the rest was actually all tax deductible because it's

0:41:08 Thomas: Sure.

0:42:08 Matt: An ordinary business expense to clean up after a crash. Yes. Yep. And 70% of that, $1.7 billion, didn't go to the families. It went to Boeing's customers, the three major airlines that had been inconvenienced by having their planes grounded. So we got to take care of them. That left $500 million, again, $1.17 billion for the airlines and $500 million for the families of 346 people. And now this doesn't preclude, There are a couple of interesting things about this, as Coffey points out. This doesn't preclude the airlines and the families bringing their own claims, and presumably they would have. Are pursuing other punitive damages as well. So this is essentially just a down payment on what they're going to be paying out to the families anyway. So it's not really that big a thing. Kind of cynically packaged all of this up to make it look like they're getting a hefty fine of $2.5 billion. That's the headline. Sounds good. But when you break it down, it's a very low -end fine, $243 million.

0:42:08 Casey: Oh, my God. Oh, my God Wow.

0:43:04 Thomas: Wow.

0:43:04 Matt: That's, I think, almost below the low end of the sentencing guidelines. And what's even stranger about that is that, as they mentioned in the DPA, Boeing stonewalled the DOJ for six months. They just would not cooperate or do anything, which usually gets you a little bit more of an enhancement in a sentencing. But they just kind of let that go. They just gave them only partial credit because they had stonewalled.

0:43:05 Thomas: Yeah. What?

0:43:23 Thomas: Does that mean like they didn't turn over documents or something? What? Yeah.

0:43:25 Matt: Yeah, just refused to cooperate with the FAA because they knew, you know, they had a problem. And the really egregious thing about this DPA in particular, and apparently, according to Coffey, most DPAs, is the statement of facts. Now, we talked last week about how, in my cases, I'll often negotiate the facts to Make sure that we get on the record exactly what they're going to say. So Boeing, and same thing with the Jeffrey Epstein case, right? They sat down off the record and worked out exactly what it was he was going to be admitting responsibility to. And in this case, obviously, there's no question that you had people at the highest levels of Boeing that wanted to have pushed this thing through as quickly as possible. And we have plenty of testimony about that.

But they decided, and this is true, to just pick out a couple of scapegoats, the technical pilots. And basically, I mean, I don't know that much about civil aviation, but I'm reading this and I'm like, this can't be right. There's no way these people are the people who are responsible for this. Because what the statement of facts is saying is that, well, they became aware as they were testing this plane that this MCAS thing existed, and they didn't report it to the FAA independently, as if these people at the mid -level of the company would do that, would go to the FAA independently. Person identified as Boeing employee one in the DPA is named Mark Forkner. He was actually put on trial for some kind of wire fraud because

0:43:40 Thomas: Hmm.

0:44:07 Thomas: You're Our number

0:44:39 Matt: Of, yeah.

0:44:39 Thomas: One employee, oh Awesome, that sounds great. What do I win, that's

0:44:45 Matt: He was about six months after the DPA went in, he was prosecuted in federal court and he was acquitted in three hours, which is pretty unusual as we're talking about in federal code. His defense at trial was that he was a scapegoat for Boeing and that he Was being put out to dry for this. He was, and that was it.

0:44:59 Thomas: Pretty Good Yeah But

0:45:02 Casey: And the jury did not have a hard time believing that.

0:45:04 Matt: It. Yeah.

0:45:05 Thomas: But what's amazing is, again, it's sort of like, uh, and it links back to what we talked about with Casey too, where it's like, okay, you have different people involved in the same crime, some are found innocent, some are found like, oh, did you know, it seems contradictory, like did the crime even happen, you know? And in this one it's like, well, apparently Boeing was able to put it all on this guy, or maybe a handful of people, and then in their trials it's like, well, no, they didn't, they're obviously, but that just Coexists I guess

0:45:29 Matt: Yeah, yeah, it does. And the statement of facts still says that it's this guy's fault and his deputy and that they were the ones ultimately responsible. And he's got emails like specifically, he says at one point, this is even in the statement of facts. If we lose level B, which is the training that they're trying to make sure The state within it will be thrown squarely on my shoulders. It was Mark who cost Boeing tens of millions of dollars. And I mean, he's, he's saying directly that he knows that he's going to get blamed by the higher-ups for this because they're Pushing him to get this thing at level B. I mean, there's no question. He's being told he has to keep it at this level, and he doesn't. And so there's no question in this statement of facts. There's no issue whatsoever with who pushed him to do it, who knew what, when they knew it. And obviously, they knew the whole time after this first crashed, especially, that there was an issue with this MCAS system.

0:45:45 Thomas: Right Yeah

0:45:58 Casey: Oh, That, uh, trial, that guy, that actually, that was after obviously the the DPI? Right, okay. So, I mean, it's Like they couldn't change the the language at that point, right? I

0:46:23 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. No. That Was right, I mean, if you really should take a look at the statement of facts because it Is so blatant what they're doing that

0:46:33 Thomas: Oh

0:46:31 Casey: Yeah. So, Matt, um, what I was wondering, if you know, and I know that you you said something about this earlier, but procedurally, what happens if, say, during that six month review period the DOJ finds that Boeing has violated this agreement, so say because of, you know, the various problems they've had, you know, with the Alaska Airlines flight, with these other issues that have come up, does it go back onto a trial list or something like that? Do they actually prosecute them? What exactly, do you know, like procedurally What happens?

0:47:01 Thomas: Plane -sized handcuffs, slap on them.

0:47:06 Matt: Yeah. I mean, in this way, it is like a contingent set of finding, or any other kind of diversionary program, where if you do have a problem during the three years term, consequences of breach are spelled out on page 16 of the agreement. And number one is if the company commits any felony under U.S. federal law. So that Alaska Airlines thing may turn out to have been felonious. It's possible. But also if the company doesn't cooperate with the government during the time of all of this, if they provide any more false or incomplete or misleading information, there's a couple of different ways you can still be found in breach. And as you said, they have up until July 7th to make a final determination about that. I know the families are pushing to try to get something going here so that this DPA doesn't become final.

0:47:41 Casey: Would The Families, would they then lose that money though? They wouldn't get the 500 million dollars you said, there was some other sort Of, was There some other Fund they Were gonna get, or no?

0:47:48 Thomas: That's Interesting Yeah And

0:47:50 Matt: Well, they wouldn't get it from this agreement, but they still have other, and there's no question they're going to get it in other civil suits that are pending because, I mean, there's an acknowledged fraud. I mean we understand at this point They committed fraud. Point that Coffey makes that I wouldn't have thought of is that by reducing the total amount by 500 million, because this is essentially a down payment on what they're going to be getting, and the courts in the future can consider that they've already received this 500 million when they issue damages, actually discourages private attorneys from getting involved because that lowers the overall contingency of what you're going to get out of the settlement. So that was kind of interesting.

0:47:50 Casey: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Hmm Wow

0:48:22 Matt: Yeah, this DPA, as I said, it's an interesting read, especially the statement of facts. If you go out and read what actually happened and then you read the statement of facts, it's just interesting to see sort of the universe that this exists within, the very special universe of the DPA. I this and I was I was trying to imagine if you had someone who was at the top of, I don't know, like a local heroin ring or fentanyl ring, right?

0:48:43 Thomas: I do Always Buy local with Heroin Better For the environment, support local business.

0:48:44 Matt: Yeah, of course, you got to farm to

0:48:48 Thomas: Yeah Farm To spoon, yeah.

0:48:48 Matt: Table. But farm to arm, I guess. Yeah, I mean, if you Had somebody that was at the top a major drug ring that was killing people, fully expect that they would would be serving decades for this. And you don't get any kind of deal. You don't get any, any, any kind of out from that. And fentanyl is awful, obviously, but so is knowingly allowing a plane to fly. That's going to nosedive. Um.

0:48:53 Thomas: Yeah Yeah

0:49:12 Matt: Is what we were looking at in our criminal legal system. This is how corporations are treated differently from people, even if they they are people.

0:49:11 Thomas: There's

0:49:17 Casey: Do You Think some Of It might just have to do with the fact that like prosecutors and detectives general are not huge fans of paper cases, and this is a paper Case, as Opposed To Right, I mean It's It's pretty well known, like, I think, and who knows, maybe this is different with the feds, but I doubt it, just based on this, um, know, the types of cases that are sort of easy to prosecute and to assemble a case are the ones that like involved, you know, things like drug dealers or, um, know, or other like fairly straightforward crimes, violent or otherwise, that do not involve a lot of what we would call paper, right, um

0:49:25 Matt: Yeah. I was thinking that too. Yeah, sure.

0:49:46 Thomas: Going to be the one drug ring that does operate via email and That would Be that Would be funny, mm

0:49:49 Casey: Yeah Yeah Well You know, and there is to be fair, like, probably in the higher level, like federal prosecutions, you know, I'm sure they do have things like, you know, bank records and what various they're doing with their Money Um, I can only imagine the amount of paper that a prosecution of Boeing would generate, I would imagine it Would involve like truckloads of information if you were to like print it all out, which I guess nobody does anymore, but I mean, many, many terabytes, right, of of material would be involved, I would assume, and I I would think that the strategy by Boeing would be to, be rather than stonewalling, to provide every single thing they possibly could, knowing that it would take like decades for investigators to get through that And so, I would venture a guess that might be part of the impetus to come a deal like this.

0:49:59 Thomas: -Hmm Yeah Right Yeah You Yeah, it's something they always say, like, wage theft, you, like, X bazillion dollars a year, and there really, really is, in my opinion, something to the fact that we think of crime a certain way. Like people think of stealing $20 from a, you register as that's that you're a thief, that's crime. Wage theft, I don't, I can't like name a person who's like, wages, a company is stolen. Even though it happens all the time, those people don't usually get treated like thieves, you know, they get treated, there's some, there'S a fine or a penalty or if that, you you know, for not being in compliance with something or other.

And you know a lot of it, it's the inherent, I think, like it's the inherent bias of the system that's not always like, obviously not intentional all the time. It's just like, that's why systemic injustice is a major problem. I think it is hard to treat some of these the same way exactly, but really they are. And often some of these white collar quote unquote crimes are often way worse. Like they often are way way more devastating. You know, the person

0:50:42 Casey: Well I

0:50:56 Matt: Yeah sure.

0:51:31 Matt: No.

0:51:31 Thomas: You talked about the, or the hypothetical, I suppose, Casey, the other week of someone giving someone a gun that doesn't even go off in the commission of a crime, that person gets what, 20 years. Like, you're someone who, you a decision that very obviously could lead to flights, full of people dying, or, or even if you're someone who commits white collar crime and just empties people's retirement, you know, or something like that, like that is so much more damage to society, but we just will never treat those things the same. Yeah.

0:51:58 Matt: And

0:51:58 Casey: Think honestly you'd have to invest in you'd and in investigators who have like accounting backgrounds or who understand math or can deal with this type of of information, because the reality is is that for most people this is not what they are trained to do. And I understand the federal government is a little different, so maybe there's less of an excuse there.

But I, I think if the, on any level, but especially the federal level, wanted to focus on those types of crimes, it would require obtaining resources, you know, partly in the form of personnel that are able to assemble those types of cases. Because that is a hard thing to do if what you were trained to do is put together armed robbery cases or murder cases, which, by the way, are, you know, they're very difficult to organize, right?

Because the amount of material of various types and the amount of witnesses, there's a lot of moving parts. But, you know, legally there are issues as well. But the reality is, is that it takes a different type of investigator, in in my view, to review financial documents or to review engineering documents, obviously, from something like Boeing, then the

0:52:58 Casey: Average prosecutor or investigator.

0:52:58 Thomas: I Just Know, when I commit my murder, finally, eventually, it's going to be the most bureaucratic murder you've ever seen. There's going to be so much paperwork. I'm going to set up emails. There's gonna be, I'm learning how to, the point of this, I think, is to learn how to commit a murder from Casey, right? I mean, that's definitely the the Takeaway Takeaway.

0:53:00 Matt: Then trying it.

0:53:16 Casey: No, That Is not the point, but I will, I will tell you that they are, I will tell you investigators are very, very good about digital evidence, like, so it's it's really what starts to come to to money and engineering and patents and things like that. But they're, at least around here, they are on top of it when it comes to phone records and emails and and digital evidence in general. That is, for the most part, I should say. Yep.

0:53:37 Matt: Then it gets handed over to the second half of the Law and Order episode where the prosecutors take it to court, and you have to spend three weeks explaining why this was actually a defrauding conspiracy, right? And how they actually conspired to commit fraud. That's going to take forever to get all of that in there. You can see why they don't want to try these case. Of course, that's a great point. Don't understand, I wanted to kind of end with this, is why the Biden administration a couple of years ago was arguing, because the families went in actually using the same attorney who had blown open the Jeffrey Epstein non -prosecution agreement. He's actually the leading expert in the country on the crime.

0:53:46 Casey: Wow.

0:54:07 Thomas: We We got to do the main story on that at some point.

0:54:10 Matt: Yeah, no, there's a lot to talk about. But the Crime Victims Rights Act, he's the main guy on this. And he was arguing just as he he did in the Epstein case. And of course, the Epstein case, that non -prosecution agreement was reached without the families even knowing that they'd reached an agreement.

0:54:23 Thomas: Unbelievable.

0:54:24 Casey: Wow.

0:54:24 Matt: Just, yeah, a complete violation of the CVRA. And he's making the same argument about this, that the DOJ did not communicate with the families about what they were going to be doing with this DPA before they signed it. And the Biden administration's response was that, well, these families aren't crime victims. That's actually, yep, that was what they argued in court. And this very conservative judge had had to find, well, no, they are crime victims. I have an agreement in front of me in which they've admitted to a crime, right? And these people died as the result of it. The charge here, the actual count is one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, which is generally because of the way they handled the FAA and to avoid the extra training.

0:54:25 Casey: Wow.

0:54:39 Thomas: Oh, come on. Wow.

0:54:49 Thomas: Unbelievable, oh,

0:55:02 Casey: Gross. And so their argument was because the crime charge was conspiracy, that the United States, Yeah, that's terrible.

0:55:05 Thomas: The victim is the United States, wow,

0:55:06 Matt: Yep. Yep, That it was the FAA were the only victims here. Yep. That's it. You got it. Yep, yeah.

0:55:10 Casey: Wow. That's

0:55:12 Thomas: Yeah, because the FAA wants to regulate airlines just because it's out of a personal, like, a sense of accomplishment, It's not before, like, humans that want to not die on flights. It's because the entity of the FAA is, like – it has feelings and, you know, that's why. That makes sense.

0:55:29 Matt: They like to do their little Sudoku puzzles. Yeah.

0:55:29 Thomas: Okay. The law is smart and great.

0:55:33 Matt: Yeah, of course. There is ongoing litigation going on here. They're trying to get a lot of records from all of this so that they can come back and challenge this before this July date, at the point at which the government will file a motion to dismiss its own indictment. Because find that terms all were met, then they'll file this motion to dismiss. The judge had to find that, no, you actually are crime victims. This is, again, a very conservative judge, but you don't have the right to file this yet. And the Fifth Circuit agreed that it was premature because isn't actually a motion to dismiss on the table yet. So you have to wait until that's actually been filed. And now they're trying to get these records and saying, we can't challenge the motion to dismiss if we don't know how they got to this deal. So it's something to watch. We'll see what happens here.

0:55:53 Thomas: Right. No

0:56:15 Casey: Interesting.

0:56:15 Thomas: Kidding.

0:56:16 Matt: I'm going to wade into something else very briefly, because I did want to mention, if we have a second, to talk about John Barnett, because he's a real hero. And I want to talk about heroes whenever we can on this show. Unrelated to the 737 litigation that we've been talking about, but John Barnet came forward about major issues with the 787, the Dreamliner, and just the sloppiness in production. He was a 32 -year employee of Boeing, and at great personal cost to himself, he became a whistleblower. He couldn't take it anymore, more. And he's been involved in six years now of litigation. He was finishing his deposition on the 11th of March, just a few weeks ago. And this deposition, he said he was feeling really good about how it went. His lawyer said he did incredibly. Finally relieved to have this behind him. He's going to drive home and go see his mother in Louisiana.

0:56:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:57:01 Casey: No. Oh.

0:57:02 Matt: And, uh, he was found with a bullet in his head, a holiday in parking lot the morning that he was supposed to finish his deposition. Now, I'm not saying that Boeing killed him. There's been a lot of speculation about this, the same way there has been a bit about Epstein. I don't want to speculate about this, but I just want to say that no matter what happened here, he's gone. And it sounds like from bio accounts, a really great guy, I heard him interviewed, went by Swampy. He's a swamp dog from Louisiana and really cared about the company and about trying to do the right thing. And I just have so much respect for anybody who's in a position like that, that chooses to come forward and goes through what he went through, because the company really punished him for doing this in ways that they shouldn't have, obviously.

0:57:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:57:27 Casey: Yeah.

0:57:41 Casey: Wow, I thought we were going to end on a positive note. I mean, that is positive, but the, the part where he ended up dead in a holiday in parking lot is, uh, very unfortunate.

0:57:45 Matt: Yeah, but well, it's unfortunate. And it's,

0:57:50 Casey: Shit, oh.

0:57:51 Matt: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of suspicion, obviously, around all of this. The investigation is open, but he did actually specifically tell a friend within a few weeks of his death that if I die, it was not a suicide, because I'm not killing myself. That's never going to happen.

0:57:52 Casey: Wow. Yikes. Yeah.

0:58:05 Thomas: I read that and it's like that seemed a little weird, like, it was there some reason to believe that Boeing is capable of this in a way that would even, like, it's not like it may, it would make a difference. So, the Kate, I just seemed the whole thing seemed weird. I don't, I feel like the police of wherever that is, you think they'd be incentivized to cover anything up, and it seemed like they, you know, there was no evidence of anything, so who knows. Yeah.

0:58:17 Matt: Yeah, it is. No, see. We'll see, but again, it's unfortunate that he's gone, and that no matter what happened, if it was Just the weight of the whole thing, then that's unfortunate too. Though, I do want to keep a watch on what goes on with this Boeing case and with these families and what they're able to get, because this DPA, after diving into it, to look more at these generally, because I'm appalled at what you can do with these agreements.

0:58:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:58:31 Casey: Thank.

0:58:47 Thomas: Unbelievable. Well, thanks as always both of you for the breakdown, it's, it's awesome getting that real experience, uh, just so fascinating learning from you both, um, for doing the show, man, Casey. And more plug for a Law'd Awful Movies, number one, hot off the presses. Please go listen to Law'd Awful Movies. That's on the second tier of patreon.com/law. Was so fun. People are loving it on Patreon. It was Matt and Casey, and it was Law'd Awful Movies. Paper Chase, really bad movie. Really, really good.

0:58:57 Casey: You really bad movie

0:59:16 Matt: Please make our sacrifice worth something, and

0:59:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Casey's still mad at me for that. I don't know. You know, I just get the feeling we haven't talked or anything, but I just felt like a general anger from across the country at having to have watched that movie.

0:59:30 Casey: Every, every now and then over the weekend, I'd be like, I'm so mad that I had to watch that.

0:59:36 Matt: Then we have to talk about it. Keep

0:59:37 Thomas: Yeah. So make, make this sacrifice worth it, everyone. Check out Law'd Awful Movies, Paper Chase on patreon.com/law. All right. Now for real, see you next episode. Thanks so much.

0:59:39 Casey: It's so bad

0:59:48 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.