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AMW Pilots - 5 yrs, 2.5 yrs prison time

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sqwkvfr said:
Good GOD!!!! That is sheer lunacy!

They should have held up a Circle K with a stolen gun....they'd have gotten less time!!
MADD food for thought...

http://www3.madd.org/laws/law.cfm?LawID=ANTI

The chart is the "plea bargain" vs. the "anti plea bargain" states. Unfortunately for Cloyd and his Co-Captain, Florida is a non-plea bargain state.
 
The funny thing is...most cases are resolved by "plea negotiating". Cloyd and his Co-Captain attempted to negotiate a plea negotiation prior to trial...more than once, I believe.

Guilty pleas are the bread and butter of the American criminal courts. They outnumber trials by more than five to one at the federal level and by about ten to one at the state and local levels (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1984). The data in Figure 13-1 demonstrate the pervasiveness of guilty pleas.

Most guilty pleas are the result of plea bargaining. The prosecutor, defense attorney, defendant, and sometimes the judge reach an accommodation on the disposition of the case.

Plea bargaining can best be defined as the process through which a defendant pleads guilty to a criminal charge with the expectation of receiving some consideration from the state.

Plea bargaining is hardly new. There is considerable evidence that it became a common practice in state courts sometime after the Civil War (Alschuler 1979; Friedman 1979; Sanborn 1986). In federal courts the massive number of liquor cases stemming from Prohibition led to the institutionalization of plea bargaining in the first third of this century (Padgett 1990).

What is new is the amount of attention plea negotiations now receive. During the early decades of this century, it was only sporadically discussed. The crime surveys of the 1920s reported the dominance of plea bargaining (Illinois Association 1929; Moley 1928), but most courts persistently denied its existence.

It was not until the 1960s that plea bargaining emerged as a controversial national issue. One indication of this controversy is the language used to describe negotiated settlements in criminal cases. Currently, the two most popular names are plea bargaining and plea negotiation.

These terms, often used interchangeably, evoke negative images suggesting that the courts are “bargaining with criminals” (Sanborn 1986).

Even more pejorative phrases, such as “copping a plea” or “striking a deal,” are sometimes used. Moreover, court officials disagree about what is meant by plea bargaining.

Some prosecutors refuse to admit that they engage in bargaining; they simply call it something else (Miller,McDonald, and Cramer 1978).

Plea bargaining is a general term that encompasses a wide range of practices. Table 13-1 on page 325 shows the extensive differences among jurisdictions in the ratio of pleas to trials. In some courthouses, trials are rare indeed. In others, they are more common.

Any discussion of negotiated justice must start with the recognition that there are important variations both in the types of plea agreements negotiated and the process by which such agreements are reached.

Cited from:
America's Courts and the Criminal Justice System
David W. Neubauer
Copyright 2002
Wadsworth/Thomson
......
 
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I understand that what they did was wrong, but these sentences are a little excessive.

Also, how is the state of Florida planning on enforcing this ruling for the FO:
"He was also barred from operating an aircraft for five years."

This is state law overstepping it's boundaries, imho.
 
Costs and Risks of Trial
The possibility of trial greatly influences negotiations. Trials are a costly and time-consuming means of establishing guilt. For example, to try a simple burglary case would take from one to four days (depending on the jurisdiction) and require the presence of the judge, bailiff, clerk, defense attorney, prosecutor, and court reporter.

During this period, none of them could devote much time to the numerous other cases requiring disposition. Also, each would be forced to spend time preparing for this trial. A trial would also require the presence of numerous noncourt personnel: police officers, witnesses, victims, and jurors. For each of these persons, a trial represents an unwanted intrusion into their daily lives.

Based on these considerations, all members of the courtroom work group have a common interest in disposing of cases and avoiding unnecessary trials. Their reasons may differ. Judges and prosecutors want high disposition rates in order to prevent case backlogs and to present a public impression that the process is running smoothly. Public defenders prefer quick dispositions because they lack enough people to handle the caseload. Private defense attorneys are dependent on high case turnover to earn a living, because most of their clients can afford only a modest fee.

In short, all members of the courtroom work group have more cases to try than time or resources to try them (Eisenstein and Jacob 1977). To a large extent, then, a trial is a mutual penalty that all parties seek to avoid through plea bargaining.

To be sure, not all trials are avoided. But through plea bargaining, scarce trial resources can be applied to the cases that need to be tried.

Cited from:
America's Courts and the Criminal Justice System
David W. Neubauer
Copyright 2002
Wadsworth/Thomson
In other words, Cloyd and his Co-captain got horse buggered by Florida's "non-plea bargain" DUI law. They must have had free time to devote to this case, seeing as Florida is all caught up on trying murderers, rapists, robbers, burglars, home invasion burglars, child molesters, pimps, drug dealers, identity stealers and what not...oh, that's right, they don't try those people, they plea bargain with them. DUI is not a plea bargain offense in Florida...sorry, I forgot, my bad. At least they got their priorities straight.
 
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good for them, hope it sends a message to all those other pilots who decide to drink and fly
 

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