DOJ Position on Corporate Criminal Behavior Needs to be Reversed

The position of the Department of Justice (DOJ), people killed due to corporate criminal behavior are not crime victims, is not tenable and needs to reversed.

The argument that DOJ did not consult with the families of the 346 killed by the concealed and defective MCAS flight control system because it did not think it could prove they died beyond a reasonable doubt due to Boeing’s admitted criminal conduct is weak, possibly corrupt and should not be taken at face value. The DOJ must have known that its proposed deal with Boeing would have likely been shot down as outrageous had it consulted as required by the crime victims law and fundamental procedural due process of notice and opportunity to be heard.

There should be discovery of the emails and discussions among the federal prosecutors who made this decision, especially the lead prosecutor and US Attorney who joined the Boeing legal defense team shortly after the deferred prosecution agreement was struck. This agreement let Boeing officials off the hook, concealed what their role might have been in Boeing’s criminal misconduct and waived the usual DOJ monitoring. The Boeing deferred prosecution agreement is accordingly shockingly weak and tainted; it needs re-examination by the court and possibly the authorities dealing with prosecutor ethics.

There is also the strange move by the DOJ prosecution to place the case in Fort Worth Texas far from where the criminal conduct occurred, far from the Boeing and FAA offices involved as well as the DOJ office that handles most major corporate crime cases, but in arguably the most airline friendly federal jurisdiction in America. Fort Worth/Dallas is the headquarters home of both American and Southwest Airlines, the two largest domestic carriers and major Boeing MAX customers. Southwest even had a special agreement with Boeing that required payment of millions of dollars in penalties should additional pilot MAX training be required by FAA.