Ibra wrote:
After one year, he is now facing 20 years of prison
Serves him right for deliberately wrecking a perfectly good Taylorcraft!
20 years would be pretty much, though. In Finland our laws protect criminals more than targets – for a murder you might get 13 years but seldom would sit it all. And that is usually the strongest penalty here. Anything else would be usually below 8 years. And if you get say 8 years for some crime and still continue the same stuff before going to jail, those other crimes are often included into the same years. Seriously: a lot of times judges decide that new punishments are not needed, as you are already going to have that one ahead. Sometimes a little is added but never much.
So it is no wonder that young people do not care a bit if they get caught – especially as young ones get out when half of the time is gone….
It would really be good to have a real life time penalty. There is a well knows killer who gets out every few years (3-6) and goes to kill the next one – I don’t remember if he is now serving his 3. or 4. murder penalty but after some years he will be free again and the same goes on.
What I’ve read is that criminals do not expect to get caught, so sentences are not a deterrent.
Back to this guy, look at what he did. It’s not just some silly prank. He dumped a plane from some altitude, potentially onto some unsuspecting individual(s). That is pretty far out on the “antisocial” scale 
Of course they will make an example of him. As regards which of multiple offences will be used, that choice is done for the convenience of the prosecution. They don’t have to pick the most “serious” one. They pick the one which is easiest to prove while yielding a reasonably long sentence.
He is not sentenced because he dumped the plane. As far as I understand he’s sentenced because
- he got a helicopter to salvage the wreck
- wiped away whatever evidence possible
- cut the plane into small pieces and
- deposited them into trash containers in order to render impossible any investigation on the case
What riles me perhaps most about this little asshole is the area where he crashed the airplane. This is a wooded, remote area and he crashed an airplane during one of the worst fire seasons we’ve had in a long time in California. If this idiotic stunt had ignited a wildfire, he would have caused a lot of damage and put many people at risk. Hope he does some serious jail time.
Peter wrote:
What I’ve read is that criminals do not expect to get caught, so sentences are not a deterrent.
That may be, but if someone is put away for a really long time it is a deterrent for that person. While gone he won’t do more harm.
Peter wrote:
Of course they will make an example of him. As regards which of multiple offences will be used, that choice is done for the convenience of the prosecution. They don’t have to pick the most “serious” one. They pick the one which is easiest to prove while yielding a reasonably long sentence.
In the US you can land a fairly long sentence by adding up the charges. That is how some folks get sentences several times their life expectancy… Won’t be the last moron to land himself in a correctional facility for a pretty long time.
UdoR wrote:
What is the sentence for murdery in Germany? 25 years if I am not mistaken. That’s a bit disproportionate.
That is the US we are talking about here… murder carries life sentences, sometimes multiple, sometimes even death. This is not the European penal system which lets the worst offenders out after a bit.
He won’t get a sentence anywhere near what’s being discussed as the maximum. I’m not going to hazard a guess but I’m surprised it even made it to court. FAA attorneys are looking for publicity, to discourage pranksters.
(All right, I’ll guess he serves 6 months, just long enough that everybody has forgotten about him )
I’m sure most of us grew up with or knew an attention-seeking idiot. Perhaps they didn’t get enough love at home, or something is broken in their DNA, but they just constantly behaved in a way that was far outside the norm – in the negative direction. Often the things they did were seen or known by a handful of people – most of whom called them out on this bad behavior.
Unfortunately today, these people have a platform that will actually reward them for this anti-social behavior. We as a society need to find a way to deal with it like we would do in real life. Perhaps this case will wake up the various regulators to nudge the idiots and the platforms to reduce these kinds of activities.
He is making a fair bit from YouTube.
Maybe some 10s of k a year.
I watch some regular reports from Ukraine and the people doing them are being extremely careful with what is shown, to prevent de monetisation by YT.
There is a lot more going on behind the scenes on this.
eurogaguest1980 wrote:
Often the things they did were seen or known by a handful of people
Well, he was on the US Olympic team as a snowboarder. How antisocial can such a person be? He simply pushed it too far, and ended up doing something really bad in a legal sense. What is worth noting here is that none of his YouTube stunts cases any legal action. It’s what he did “off YouTube” that got him (or will eventually get him), and the reason is that what he did IS serious matter (and they probably have lots of tangible evidence), while his YouTube stunt is legally more in the “meh” category.
Now, 20 years sounds like an awful lot of years for chopping up a plane
Some time ago I googled if there were any laws against throwing stuff out of a plane. The Norwegian criminal law states that:
So, beware of your droppings But, there’s a catch of course, and it’s the intention. It will only go into effect if the intention is proven to be an “act of terror” (as defined in the law).
