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

Post by omginternets » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 11:41 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #29

duskwuff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note, however, that this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated. It means that the federal prosecutor decided that the act of obstruction would be easier to prove, since the intentional nature of those acts is much more self-evident.

> [...]this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated[...] If he'd stuck to the story that he just had an engine mishap would they have been able to prove that it was intentional? They'd almost certainly have revoked his license to ever fly again, but filming everything you're doing isn't illegal. Nor is wearing a parachute because you know you're a crappy pilot that'll bail out at the fi…

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 11:42 PM UTC

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

Post by omginternets » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 11:43 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

bhhaskin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a law that says you can't intentionally crash a plane? Honest question. There isn't a law that prevents you from intentionally crashing other vehicles. Just around property damage and endangering other people.

> law that says you can't intentionally crash a plane? No. We do crash tests from time to time [1]. But at a minimum, you must control--not even just own--the terrain you're crashing into. (It's also not solely a Part 91/FAA matter. The EPA, for example, would also want to have a say.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Boeing_727_crash_experime...

Post by paulryanrogers » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 11:43 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #24

WillPostForFood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal fees alone are going to be many times YouTube revenue. Add lost wages for a half year in prison. Add future lost revenue from sponsors who don't want to be associated with this, and it has to be a huge financial disaster.

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?

Post by omginternets » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 11:46 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…