Last Thursday, families who lost relatives in the crashes of two Boeing 737 aircraft petitioned the Fifth Circuit to reinstate the criminal charge against Boeing. In two petitions I filed, the families asked the Circuit to reverse District Judge O'Connor's approval last week of the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the conspiracy case against Boeing. The petitions explained that the Department violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA) by not fully conferring with the families about its dismissal plans—and by concealing a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) from the families in the initial phases of the case. The petitions also argue that Judge O'Connor failed to fully assess whether dismissing the case was in the "public interest." Today, the Fifth Circuit consolidated the two petitions and ordered the Justice Department and Boeing to respond. In this post, I set out the case's current procedural posture and then the families' arguments.
I've blogged about the Boeing criminal case a number of times before, including here, here, and here. In a nutshell, Boeing lied to the FAA about the safety of its 737 MAX aircraft. The Justice Department charged Boeing with conspiracy for these lies, but then immediately entered into a DPA to resolve the criminal case. In subsequent litigation, the families proved that the 346 passengers and crew on board the two doomed 737 MAX flights were "crime victims" under the CVRA—they had been directly and proximately harmed by Boeing crime. This makes Boeing's conspiracy crime the "deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history," as Judge O'Connor described it.
In the most recent proceedings, the Justice Department moved to dismiss its earlier-filed charge against Boeing in favor of resolution through a non-prosecution agreement (NPA). Earlier this month, I blogged about Judge Reed O'Connor (U.S. District Court for the District of the Northern District of Texas) granting the Justice Department's motion. In his order, Judge O'Connor essentially agreed with many of the factual objections that I have made for the families who lost loved ones because of Boeing's crime. But, reluctantly, Judge O'Connor dismissed the charge, concluding that he lacked a legal basis for blocking the Department's ill-conceived non-prosecution plan.
