Landing without the landing gear deployed.
Vetting,training, supervision.[banghead]
I saw that on another sight. I understood that the plane lost power and was dropping like a rock. No time and no power to drop the landing gear.
Plane’s 1st attempt at landing - gear not down. Engines contacted runway about 4500 feet down a 11000 foot runway, engines contacted runway again about 7500 feet down the runway. Note - bottom area of engines contain the necessary fuel, electrical and hydraulic pumps and generators. After 2nd runway strike the plane climbed to 2K feet and were able to get the landing gear lowered but could not complete the turn to return to the airport to land as both engines had lost power. Crashed in a residential area.
Five years after the accident…We used to have the Sixth Amendment in this country. “The 6th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all persons accused of a crime the right to a speedy trial”
That means a speedy trial after charges have been brought.
So lets have a system where charges are brought for political purposes prior to an election and dropped after the election since there was no more evidence to support the charges the third time through than there were the first time the charges were dropped. Keep it up and you can ruin a persons life everytime an election is in the offing. The real system of American Justice. [/sarcasm]
You raised an important though subtle distinction. Perhaps it is a needed point on here to explain why we have statutes of limitation of various lengths.
And to note how carefully the legal ‘establishment’ takes note of these and acts technically within them (sometimes to ‘stretch things out’ as in Bostian’s case).
I notice that the formal issues around ‘double jeopardy’ have not been brought up here yet. Here too, very careful things are engineered in to retain the ability to repeat-prosecute upon perceived ‘need’ (which unfortunately includes political benefit, etc.)
A moral here: be sure you have good legal representation, because your prosecution will be the best taxpayer money can buy, and may be unrestrained by considerations of individual decency.
From the link in the original post:
“Given his extensive training and experience and despite having 250 passengers aboard, (Bostian) consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of derailment,” Stabile wrote. “He was going twice over the speed limit… Moreover, the evidence indicates that, based on his training and experience, (Bostian) was aware of the risk inherent in navigating the Frankford Curve.”
Stabile found that prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to merit taking the case against Bostian to a jury which “could conclude that (Bostian) acted recklessly in causing the derailment of Train 188.”
Why would anyone believe that Bostian "consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of derailment,” as the judge claims?
That is the point upon which the state bases the very need for a trial.
There is no doubt whatsoever at present that the train was wrecked ‘under his supervision’ and that it was his hand in the throttle that accelerated the train in the wrong place. The state argues (and on this point I tend to agree with them) that no adequate explanation of this was ever provided, and (on this point I concur less) that an adversarial, criminal trial is the way to obtain such an adequate explanation.
I expect to see a great deal of ‘Philadelphia lawyering’ in both sides addressing precisely the point you raise: what is ‘consciousness’ (or ‘conscientiousness’) in the framework of the things influencing Bostian’s thinking that night. We may even see the point raised that ‘we’ll never really know’ because of the assertation of post-traumatic retrograde amnesia, followed perhaps by Roger Robb-style browbeating of Bostian (who I suspect would be susceptible to bullying tactics) to try to get him to slip up somewhere and ‘admit he remembers’. Other likely lines of argument suggest themselves. One of the reasons we need ‘tort reform’ so badly is precisely that we give lawyers the ability to manipulate ‘search for justice’ in so many potentially-expedient ways… and reward the wrong kinds of ‘success’.
Hence the overly-ambitious prosecutors who want to add a high-profile “scalp” to their belts so they can move on to bigger and better things.
Chuh-jing, Chuh-jing. Who pays for Bostians defense? I doubt that he has any significant assets.
Does the union, or Amtrak provide his defence? I don’t envy him as I see him as a man who was doing what he enjoyed, in a manor that he was trained and got distracted by the stoneing of the other train, and forgot where he was in a fatal way. That this was criminal to me is a terrible misapplication of the law in my opinion.
From the story: …That included a Philadelphia police officer’s account of finding dismembered body parts at the scene of the crash. A passenger testified that he sensed the train was going “way too fast” just before the crash. Another investigator said Bostian told him he didn’t remember how the crash occurred.
“Given his extensive training and experience and despite having 250 passengers aboard, (Bostian) consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of derailment,” Stabile wrote. “He was going twice over the speed limit… Moreover, the evidence indicates that, based on his training and experience, (Bostian) was aware of the risk inherent in navigating the Frankford Curve.”
The discussion of “BODY PARTS” is inflammatory and gory. And if you accept as the Judge states …based on his training and experience, (Bostian) was aware of the risk inherent in navigating the
A trial may put closure on responsibility for a fatal train crash that the NTSB has ignored. Bostian was an experienced operator who for unexplained reasons took his train at twice the safe speed around a curve. No mechanical failure. Trials can uncover truths.
Denigating our court system is a favorite sport here. To those who do so, would you prefer a show trial system of jurisprudence, ala Roland Freisler or as in the Stalin era?
No, but, (this raises hackles) for a case of this nature where there is very emotional issues involved, I have concerns over whether the jury can be influenced to “ignore” the pain and suffering of the victims and determine if the engineer could have consciously CHOSEN to overspeed into the curve. If the prosecution trots out all the “body parts” and blood and gore and paints him as a monster, which I am afraid they will do, it can be hard to keep the jury focused on whether there was INTENTION to ignore the curve and its speed restriction. The defense may have a hard time.
I watch too much TV and would see this as a case for the show, BULL.
Ever since the charges were first dismissed - this ‘case’ has been nothing more than a political grandstanding maneuver for the individual reinstating the charges; this is not about justice it is all about political theater.
I understand your concerns but as far as I know, and I may be wrong, he is not being charged with deliberately choosing to derail his train and kill passengers.
Be careful there Charlie, no-one’s denigrating the court system here. I’m sure most will agree with me there are thousands of district attorneys and prosecuting attorneys laboring long hours unsung and unknown in a never-ending struggle to keep us safe from the predators out there, and we’re grateful for them.
What I, and again I’d say most us, denigrate are the ambitious ones who let their ambitions get the better of the sense of justice they’re supposed to have. They’re out there, in fact the Supreme Court just threw out the convictions in the Federal “Bridgegate” case due to prosecutorial overreach.
And let me tell you, most of their colleagues have no use for them either, just as no-one hates a bad cop more than a good cop.
There’s seeing justice done, and there’s scalp hunting.
And as Balt said, the original charges were dismissed. That should have been the end of it, whether we agree with that finding or not.
I believe that is one possible conclusion for the trial. It is the only conclusion I can think of that would support the allegation that he consciously knew he was entering the curve at a possible roll-
Obviously not experienced enough to be distracted so easily.