YouTuber sentenced to 6 months in prison for obstructing probe into plane crash

Post by beeboobaa » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52

ryandrake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the legal fees weren't many times the revenue, I never understood why couldn't the justice system default to fines like "All income arising out of crime + $XYZ" for all crimes, so that the fine is never a cost of doing business?

My guess: it's too expensive to keep track of what constitutes "income arising out of crime" for the statutory period / lifetime of the perpetrator, especially if it could spawn an endless stream of minor cases for whether any specific income is truly "arising out of crime".

Post by Loughla » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

emilburzo wrote: post #208

resolutebat wrote: post #11

Plenty of previous discussion on HN, but IMHO the most interesting one was the early dissection of whether or not the crash was intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29729307

As one of the people who commented on that thread, it was really eye-opening to see the group dynamics involved between people who have experience in the domain vs those who don't. It definitely made me look at online debates a lot differently, as previously I thought good points can come from anywhere (which can still happen), but it turns out experience in the domain is usually way more relevant. I guess it's simil…

Post by imtringued » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

throw0101b wrote: post #15

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Critically, he is not going to jail for intentionally crashing the plane. He is being jailed "for obstructing a federal investigation by deliberately destroying the wreckage of an airplane." Had he cooperated, it's plausible to see him getting away with a license revocation and fine. Instead he did this: "In the weeks following the plane crash, Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location.…

> Had he cooperated, it's plausible to see him getting away with a license revocation and fine. Reminder of the quotation from Howard Baker (R-TN): “It is almost always the cover-up rather than the event that causes trouble.” Though some would disagree: > There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that 'it's not the crime, but the cover-up.' > But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The…

Post by kosievdmerwe » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

fbdab103 wrote: post #193

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it a felony-20-years-in-a-FPITA-prison illegal, or a giant-fine-and-revocation-of-pilot-license illegal Probably the latter unless someone gets hurt. (Agree with you that this was a dumb cover-up. Particularly when he seems to have done the cover up before posting the video?)

When does it become a cover-up vs "oopsie, didn't know"? If he had dismantled the plane before the FAA knew about the crash, would that still qualify as destroying evidence?

Post by cjrp » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

bravetraveler wrote: post #232

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Critically, he is not going to jail for intentionally crashing the plane. He is being jailed "for obstructing a federal investigation by deliberately destroying the wreckage of an airplane." Had he cooperated, it's plausible to see him getting away with a license revocation and fine. Instead he did this: "In the weeks following the plane crash, Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location.…

Amazingly childish actions with adult scale, I'm blown away. To chop it and dispose in local garbage ... yikes. Stuff like this makes me question things. I have a day job and this idiot has access to a helicopter and a spare plane to crash