Pilots detained in Brazil

[Papps]

I wasn't picking on you and I'm not an English major...by a long shot. But if you re-read what you wrote, you'll understand why I took the jab.

I knew what you meant...but words can be twisted.

No prob. im not real concerned with someone taking a jab at my online English. Now i will let you geniuses get back to figuring out all the accidents of the last 10 years.

 

[FN FAL]

www.ProPilotWorld.com sent a letter to the Brazilian ambassador on behalf of their membership regarding the detainment of the 2 Legacy Pilots. They received a prompt response from the Brazilian government. The letter and response are displayed on their forums.

This was a first class move!

Are they starting an "amnesty international" for imprisoned pilots, because this guy could sure use some help:

NEW YORK (AP) -- A U.S. military pilot who flew a U.S. Air Force jet from New York to Germany to pick up 200,000 pills of Ecstasy was sentenced Friday to 17 1/2 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl rejected appeals by defense lawyers for leniency for Capt. Franklin Rodriguez of the U.S. Air National Guard.
Koeltl said the sentence was appropriate for "a particularly egregious and despicable crime."

"He took these actions while other members of the military are over there bravely fighting for our country," Koeltl said.
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Rodriguez, 36, and Master Sgt. John Fong, 37, of the U.S. Air National Guard had pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, admitting their roles in the April 2005 flight. Fong is awaiting sentencing.

"I just chose the wrong thing and my family suffered," Rodriguez said before he was sentenced. "I loved my job, that I served my country, and I'm sorry for what I've done," he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott L. Marrah told Koeltl that Rodriguez had repeatedly flown drugs on military flights, bringing hundreds of thousands of Ecstasy pills into the United States aboard cargo aircraft.

He said more than $700,000 in cash was found in a safe in Rodriguez's Bronx apartment.

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Rodriguez, the pilot, and Fong, a load master, both of New York City, were arrested after flying the Air Force plane from Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y., to Germany and returning to Newburgh.

Ecstasy is a synthetic drug considered part hallucinogen, part amphetamine.

 

[pilot141]

Not disagreeing with your perspective, but I don't believe that the ASRS does anything for you in the case of an accident, and I'm pretty certain that it won't protect you from any criminal prosecution in any event.

Yeah, ASRS specifically precludes accidents and criminal prosecution. But the regs also stipulate the FAA must investigate an accident with the intent of increasing safety, and that if you file an ASRS report that is indicitave of a "constructive attitude".

I was trying to make a larger point about the overall attitude of the investigation. If the only intent is to point a finger, that can be done relatively quickly in most cases. If the intent is to prevent a similar accident from happening again, that can take much more time and effort.

I am NOT confident of where the Brazil investigation is going.

To everyone else: just stop responding to that chucklehead in the thread. Like any internet loser he thrives on responses to his idiocy.The surest way to make him bash his head against a wall is to ignore him.

I'm off to read the Pro-pilot World letter linked by Eagle-ista!

 

[FN FAL]

I am NOT confident of where the Brazil investigation is going.

I agree. A white guy can get a "fair" trial here in the states...there's no way that's going to happen in Brazil.

Race and the jury system

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | June 21, 2005

WRITING FOR the 6-3 majority that overturned the death penalty conviction of Thomas Miller-El, Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote, ‘‘When this evidence on the issues raised is viewed cumulatively, its direction is too powerful to conclude anything but discrimination.’’

It is somewhat reassuring to know that when discrimination is too powerful to ignore, the high court will not turn a blind eye. The Miller-El case involved a defendant who was convicted of the 1985 robbing and killing of a clerk at a Holiday Inn. During jury selection, prosecutors used their peremptory strikes to eliminate 10 of 11 potential African-American jurors.

Some of the methods used by Dallas County prosecution were so ridiculous, Souter labeled it ‘‘trickery.’’ Prosecutors eliminated black jurors even when they were four-square for the death penalty. Potential black jurors were asked more penetrating questions than were white jurors about whether the possibility of rehabilitation would affect a vote for death. White jurors who voiced mixed feelings about the death penalty were kept on the jury while black jurors who were ambivalent were struck.

Prosecutors shuffled the order of potential jurors to drive black jurors to the back of the queue. Prosecutors gave a bland description of the death penalty to white panelists but tried to provoke black panelists into voicing ambivalence about the death penalty with more graphic descriptions of the anticipated fatal injection to the defendant. This was all in keeping with evidence that Dallas County had formal and informal policies of excluding people of color from jury service from the 1950s through the 1970s.

‘‘Happenstance is unlikely to produce this disparity,’’ Souter wrote.

The Miller-El case was so bad that Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a concurring opinion that questioned whether it was time to end peremptory challenges altogether. Justice Thurgood Marshall advocated their abolishment in 1986.

‘‘The use of race- and gender-based stereotypes in the jury selection process seems better organized and more systematized than ever before,’’ Breyer wrote. He added that peremptory challenges based on stereotypes ‘‘betray the jury’s democratic origins and undermine its representative function.’’

It would be even better if the nation began to challenge the criminal justice system that betrays democracy every day. While the highest court mercifully stopped jury shuffles and discrimination for Miller-El, the lower courts are shuffling into jail thousands more African-American and Latino men. Racial bias continues to riddle the system, according to a 2005 review of 32 state and eight federal studies by the Sentencing Project, a Washington think tank that advocates for more constructive alternatives to incarceration.

For instance, a Pennsylvania study found that, controlling for the type of crime and past criminal records, white men aged 18-29 were 38 percent less likely to be imprisoned than black men aged 18-29. When white men under 30 were sentenced to prison, their average sentence was nearly three months shorter than for same-aged black men.

A study of the federal courts found that 23 percent of white defendants in drug cases received reductions in sentencing — even under mandatory sentencing — compared with only 13 percent of African-American and 14 percent of Latino defendants. In Detroit, the average sentence for black-on-white sexual assault cases was more than three years longer than for black-on-black sexual assaults and more than four years longer than white-on-white sexual assaults.

In Florida, black people charged with drug offenses were 3.6 times more likely than white people charged with drug offenses to be sentenced more severely as ‘‘habitual offenders.’’ In Kansas City, black defendants received sentences for drug offenses and property crimes that were respectively 14 months and six and a half months longer than for similar crimes committed by white perpetrators.

On the death penalty, the evidence long ago showed that it is meted out on a biased basis. The federal government itself concluded that murders of white people were more likely to result in death sentences than murders of people of color. About half of the nation’s murder cases had white victims, but 81 percent of executions between 1976-2002 were over white victims.

It is good that Breyer noted that racism in jury selection seems better organized and more systematized than ever before. But the nation, in its law-and-order mode of the last quarter century, has ignored conclusions such as those given by the Sentencing Project that racial bias in the entire criminal justice system, even if it is ‘‘somewhat hidden’’ and ‘‘somewhat surreptitious,’’ is a ‘‘very real part of the process.’’ Happenstance is unlikely to end the disparity. It will take a peremptory strike by America.

 

[Guitar rocker]

No, unlike the babies and cavemen of this forum, I understand that when I get dragged out of the wreckage of a car "accident" or a plane "accident" that there might be a criminal investigation to follow...therefore, I would know to use my right to remain silent and simply get in the ambulance.

In no post that you are referring to, did I point a finger.

Somethin tells me that if you were one of the Legacy guys in Brazil, I dont think that you would use your "right to remain silent."

 

[Guitar rocker]

I agree. A white guy can get a "fair" trial here in the states...there's no way that's going to happen in Brazil.

Oh c'mon! A black guy can get a fair trial here too. Just ask OJ.

 

[FN FAL]

Oh c'mon! A black guy can get a fair trial here too. Just ask OJ.

Jury nullification happens.

 

[FN FAL]

Somethin tells me that if you were one of the Legacy guys in Brazil, I dont think that you would use your "right to remain silent."

"I don't think" is your middle name, I won't hold that against you.

 

[Guitar rocker]

"I don't think" is your middle name, I won't hold that against you.

Remember, we are not talking about me here....we are, however, talking about your remaining silent if you were to ever get dragged out of an aircraft after an accident that you were involved in.......as you said earlier.

FNFAL, when someone takes a valid stab at you, you always try and squirm out of it by saying stupid stuff just as you did in this case. Not to worry, I expect it from you and as you said, I wont hold it against you either.

 

[FN FAL]

Remember, we are not talking about me here....we are, however, talking about your remaining silent if you were to ever get dragged out of an aircraft after an accident that you were involved in.......as you said earlier.

FNFAL, when someone takes a valid stab at you, you always try and squirm out of it by saying stupid stuff just as you did in this case. Not to worry, I expect it from you and as you said, I wont hold it against you either.

nobody can make you say anything, regardless of whether the US Constitution applies or the Brazilian Constitution applies. If they torture you and you make a statement, what can I say? You're talking apples and oranges at that point. The New York times article written by the passenger on the flight that landed said they were photographed nude to prove that torture wasn't involved. If the Brazilian government is going through those steps to inusure that torture isn't a factor, someone yapping is on their own.

As far as squirming to get out of things? That's a lie or a fabrication...99 percent of my posts regarding law, treaties and the ilk are co-located with a citation to the relevant facts.

Just because I do not choose to wear myself down with entertaining ignorant trailer trash like yourself with "not squirming", that doesn't mean anything.