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

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

#261

Post by Reubachi »

wruza wrote: post #220
madeofpalk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money would you take to spend 6 months in jail?

Depends on a jail. Some are more like resorts/rehabs compared to others. US jails for 6-month crimes aren’t particularly bad, afaiu. Personally I’d take around $200k too for a US jail, assuming I have nothing to do for half a year and there will be no social/legal consequences that matter. Disclaimer: I wouldn’t commit a crime to make money/time tradeoff, only a hypothetical experimental exchange with no real danger…

This "what if" is not realistic, because you have the retainer of "there will be no social/legal consequences that matter".

A felony prevents you from getting a job. Obviously being hyperbolic but you know that the conviction is as much a punishment as the incarceration.

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

#262

Post by bravetraveler »

cjrp wrote: post #259
bravetraveler wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds a lot like parents' money no?

Perhaps, I know nothing about this.. but it does sound like a spoiled/sheltered kid.

In a more grand sense, this feels like a good example of our absurdity/excess. I'm not sure this would have happened if "influencers" hadn't become what they are

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

#263

Post by mattmaroon »

ipqk wrote: post #102
mattmaroon wrote: post #39

He deserves a much longer sentence for this. There is so much risk of killing someone or damaging property. Even in a remote area you cannot be sure there is nothing below or that you won’t start a forest fire. I’ve seen less bad crimes get years.

Lots of things that could harm or kill someone just get a small fine. For example, going 5 mph over the speed limit has likely killed many people over the decades, yet it's still only a $100 ticket or so.

I’d guess the relative risk of sending a plane to an uncontrolled crash is orders of magnitude greater than the risk of speeding.

We do punish things that have higher risk profiles such as driving drunk, and I’d guess I’m still much more likely to kill someone by abandoning my cessna than driving with a .08 bac.

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

#264

Post by mattmaroon »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #132
kuchenbecker wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have statistics on the marginal cost of 5mph? Id be interested to understand your certainty that e.g. 60mph is both more fatal and the number of deaths that could be prevented by going 55mph. I expect there are relatively few deaths that can be directly attributed to 5mph, but given evidence I'll reconsider.

to be fair, they didnt claim it is likely, just that it could kill. You could make the same point about going 5mph under the speed limit. It is somewhat interesting to think about the factors that go into setting a punishment. It is rarely the magnitude of potential damage (worst case), and often not even the damage adjusted by the probability of occurrence. Most often, it has more to do with subjective custom and no…

Level of risk has something to do with it too. Also the benefit.

There’s small risk and tremendous benefit to letting everyone go 5 mph faster (time is money) but no benefit and relatively high risk to letting them turn Cessnas into missiles. The calculus on this one is easy

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

#265

Post by mattmaroon »

bmitc wrote: post #94
mattmaroon wrote: post #39

He deserves a much longer sentence for this. There is so much risk of killing someone or damaging property. Even in a remote area you cannot be sure there is nothing below or that you won’t start a forest fire. I’ve seen less bad crimes get years.

6-months does seem insanely light even if one only considers intentionally obstructing a federal investigation. Only 6 months for covering up and lying to investigators? I would have imagined that the sentence for that would be much longer. Is he additionally being tried for crashing the airplane on purpose?

Good point. Why wouldn’t you attempt to obstruct if it might save you from a long jail term and the downside is only six more months.

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

#266

Post by mattmaroon »

foobar1962 wrote: post #93
autoexec wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are things that shouldn't have been crimes at all ruin people's lives. I'm not saying this guy deserves to lose everything, but I agree that less than one year isn't justice considering all the harm he did and could have caused.

The prison sentence was for obstruction of justice the matter of crashing the plane hasn't been addressed yet.

It’s not being addressed at all. I don’t believe he’s charged with anything and in fact, it might not even be illegal.

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

#267

Post by Kon-Peki »

anatnom wrote: post #159
Kon-Peki wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth mentioning that the Watergate coverup eventually failed because of a plane crash and the events set in motion due to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Air_Lines_Flight_553

Woodward and Bernstein were already investigating (for many months prior to the crash), and Nixon's later coverups (after March 1973) don't seem to be connected to the crash in any way. Perhaps if the crash hadn't happened, the people/money on board could have ensured McCord (and the other plumbers) would have stayed quiet instead of telling Judge Sirica that it was a White House operation. Without some significant e…

I guess. WaPo thinks it was pretty significant:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/12/08/dorothy-hu...

> What’s clear, though, is the influence the crash had on the arc of the Watergate scandal. It was a crucial turning point. Howard Hunt, worried his children would be orphans if he spent years in prison, asked his lawyer to meet with Colson and request a pardon from Nixon after a year of incarceration if Hunt would plead guilty and avoid trial.

> Colson spoke with Nixon, as recorded in White House tapes. Nixon agreed to the clemency proposal.

> Four other Watergate defendants, Cuban Americans from Miami whom Howard Hunt had brought to the burglary operation, took this as a cue that they’d be pardoned, too, and also pleaded guilty.

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

#268

Post by financltravsty »

mkl wrote: post #221
financltravsty wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently not self-evident! A.k.a Eugène Vidocq

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fran%C3%A7ois_Vido... says he stole a lot of money from his parents' bakery, but wasn't imprisoned for that (though was for plenty of other crimes).

Yes, he was a criminal since 14 (maybe earlier) -- facing his first stint at that age. It's debatable whether his reputation followed him in those days, having bounced around towns and cities so much. But he did steal bread later on in his life to -- if Hugo is to be accepted a reliable witness -- feed his family at the time. For this he was imprisoned almost immediately, leading to the creation of Jean Valjean.

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

#269

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

bmitc wrote: post #254
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can't intentionally crash a car in the same way that you can intentionally swing a bat in your backyard without hitting anything What exactly do you mean here? I've witnessed plenty of vehicle damage done on private ranchland from various obstacles, and in some cases, other family/friends' vehicles. If you wanted to drive your vehicle into a big rock on your own land, what exactly stops you?

Such a scenario isn't really relevant here, is it? And you can't fly an airplane on your land because you don't own the air. He crashed a plane that wasn't his on land that wasn't his.

I'm not the one who contrived the scenario, I'm just asking what you meant when you contrived it, because your assertion, on its face, seems to be contrary to reality. In general, you can indeed crash your car into your stuff on your land all you want.

Did you mean to say that one can't intentionally smash a bat or a car into /other/ people's stuff without breaking a law? Because that seems pretty obvious.

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

#270

Post by petsfed »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138
petsfed wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don't bother with the cover up" doesn't contribute to the probabilistic model. If I flip a coin, it can't come up "I didn't flip the coin".

You're right. To expand: don't bother is the null. Deciding to cover-up leads to one of two outcomes, the good one (you get away) and the bad (you get boned). You don't know which of those outcomes you'll get. The percentages the comment you're responding to provides aren't probabilities, but damage fractions; 50% isn't a 50/50 likelihood, but 50% damage of the 100% case.

If your outcome is defined on a continuum, then the expectation value is the sum of product of (probability of some event times the outcome value of that event).

Fair coin flips have 50/50 odds. If we say that you get $100 if it comes up heads, and $0 if it comes up tails, then the expectation value for the money you'd have afterwards is $50=0.5*$100 + 0.5*$0. If it was an unfair coin with 30% odds of coming up heads, then your expectation value is $30= 0.3*$100 + 0.7*$0. And so on. The fact that the outcomes are dollars or damage percentages is irrelevant to the calculation.

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