A federal judge rejected Boeing\u2019s plea deal tied to a criminal fraud charge stemming from fatal crashes of its 737 Max aircraft.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Reed O\u2019Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas expressed concern in his decision on Thursday that a government-appointed monitor, a condition of the plea deal, would include diversity, equity and inclusion policiies.<\/p>\n
He wrote that \u201cthe Court is not convinced in light of the foregoing that the Government will not choose a monitor without race-based considerations and thus will not act in a nondiscriminatory manner. In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October, O\u2019Connor ordered Boeing and the Justice Department to provide details on diversity, equity and inclusion policies when the monitor would be selected.<\/p>\n
The court gave Boeing and the Justice Department 30 days to decide how to proceed, according to a court document filed Thursday.<\/p>\n
In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by misleading regulators about its inclusion of a flight-control system on the Max that was later implicated in the two crashes \u2014 a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019. All 346 people on the flights were killed.<\/p>\n
Boeing and the Justice Department didn\u2019t immediately comment.<\/p>\n
Victims\u2019 family members had taken issue with a government-appointed monitor as a condition of the plea deal and sought to provide more input. They called it a \u201csweetheart deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erin Applebaum, an attorney representing one of the victim\u2019s family members applauded the deal. \u201cWe anticipate a significant renegotiation of the plea deal that incorporates terms truly commensurate with the gravity of Boeing\u2019s crimes,\u201d Applebaum said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s time for the DOJ to end its lenient treatment of Boeing and demand real accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deal was set to allow Boeing to avoid a trial just as it was trying to get the company back on solid footing after a door burst off of a flight in midair at the start of the year, reigniting a safety crisis at the manufacturer.<\/p>\n
The new plea deal arose after the Justice Department said in May that Boeing violated a previous plea agreement, which was set to expire days after the door plug blew off the 737 Max 9 on Jan. 5. O\u2019Connor said in his decision on Thursday that it \u201cis not clear what all Boeing has done to breach the Deferred Prosecution Agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the new plea agreement, Boeing was set to face a fine of up to $487.2 million. However, the Justice Department recommended that the court credit Boeing with half that amount it paid under a previous agreement, resulting in a fine of $243.6 million.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge rejected Boeing\u2019s plea deal tied to a criminal fraud charge stemming from fatal crashes of its 737…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}