I’m not suggesting prison but some kind of charge, even if it’s a misdemeanor, is needed. Whoever faked the test result needs a record that would hopefully follow them.
Would you rather hire someone who was busted with a small amount of drugs or someone who faked test results for NASA?
Destruction of $700m property due to negligence certainly seems jailworthy to me. At the very least, this company should be paying a fine which actually recovers the damages.
That's the kind of crowd you end up running with if you do things like trying marijuana in college.
edit: Real question, though. I'm often called to report for jury duty but have yet to actually sit on a jury. My understanding is the jury is explicitly charged to reach a "guilty of accusation" or "not guilty" decision. And sentencing is a whole separate phase of the trial in which the jury is not involved. I'm sure this varies with types of charges and with locale, but... am I missing something about how you were asked as a juror to consider that sentence?
> am I missing something about how you were asked as a juror to consider that sentence?
It was probably asked during the "voir dire" phase; that's where if you actually perform jury duty and have to go down to the court, your group might be called in to sit for "voir dire", where the lawyers for each side (prosecution and defendant) ask each potential jury member certain questions regarding the case.
The questions are meant to allow the lawyers to pick from the group a pool of jurors - those that make it through voir dire perform the actual jury duty of being the jury. Those who don't, go home.
And if you ever want to never serve on a jury, or never be called again for jury duty, mention that you support FIJA or the concept of a "fully informed jury".
It's like a poison pill for ever serving on a jury again, but usually, if you are anything like a software engineer or similar (which they do ask your profession in voir dire), they will generally skip you (they really, really don't want anyone with that kind of mindset of extreme logic, reasoning, rationality, process flow, etc).
But if you mention FIJA - there's a chance they'll not only let you go, plus strike you from the "call list" - but that any other potential juror in the room will get the same treatment.
FIJA is not against the law. It's your right as a citizen to understand and be "fully informed", but the courts (or our justice system) have made it so that most people aren't (for instance, most people don't know or understand anything about "jury nullification", and the system plays to this ignorance). They will say such things prior to the jury leaving to decide the case that the jury can only consider the "guilty or not guilty" according to the law, etc - which is a complete lie. A juror or jury can decide "not guilty" even if it is clear that the law was broken, if they feel the law is unjust. But they don't want you to know that you can do that as a juror or jury. So they don't "fully inform" you of that option.
If you really want to get them into a tizzy, print out 500 business cards with the FIJA info on them, and put them on cars in the parking lots around the courthouse...note that you might need a permit for this, or they might have made it "illegal" to do this to cars around a courthouse (it might be considered jury tampering or something - amazing that by informing people of their rights as a juror and citizen, that would be considered "tampering"...), so understand that, too.
Your guess is correct, it was during the jury questions before the trial began. They mostly asked us stuff like whether we had anything going on that would be problematic if the trial ran long. (This being the DC area, several people said yes and then, when asked about the nature of the problem, answered with a polite version of "I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you." The judge, having presumably heard this a thousand times before, took it in stride.)
At one point, they asked if we would be able to consider the full range of punishment during sentencing. Naturally, we asked what that range was, and both lawyers and the judge all had to confer to decide whether or not we were allowed to know. (Apparently that question was new to them. Weird.) They finally decided we were allowed to know, and the answer was up to 20 years in prison. At that point I stated that I could not possibly consider 20 years in prison for the crime of receiving stolen property. I was subsequently cut from the jury, probably because of that, although of course they didn't say why.
Incidentally, one of the guys who had important classified stuff going on at work that would pose a big problem if the trial ran long ended up serving on the jury. I hope for his sake that it didn't actually run long.
I find your comments about FIJA maddening. Providing alleged victims and the accused a fair trial is one of the only things I think government should be involved in, but ours can't even get that right.
In Virginia, which I believe is the only state like this, a jury which renders a guilty verdict then reconvenes to determine the sentence. Everywhere else sentencing is done by the judge.
Was it in the USA? I'm surprised there would be a jury on a theft case. Where I am from, I heard jury are limited to criminal courts where the minimal case is something like manslaughter.
Yes, in the US. The Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial for any “serious” offense, which apparently means anything where the potential sentence is greater than six months. Individual states can grant the right to a jury trial for lesser offenses as well if they wish.
That can only be done if first, it can be proven that it was poor materials that caused the failure, and two, it's only useful if the company can actually afford a fine like that.
You also have to consider what your motivation behind punishment is; is it re-education? Is it compensation of damages? Or is it to just completely bankrupt the company because Never Again? I mean in that last case, NASA and the US as a whole may find itself at a disadvantage in the aluminum industry.
Funny how these are never a consideration when it’s an individual’s life on the line.
Edit: on second thought, these often are considered for individuals, as long as they’re sufficiently sympathetic/rich. See for example Brock Turner. I should say, funny how these are often not considered for individuals, depending on who they are.
Prison serves the purpose of deterrence, while the fine serves the purpose of compensation. Some amount of forgiveness is actually better for everyone, but that doesn't excuse the responsibility for restitution.
How does being able to afford the fine have anything to do with it!?
The company caused 700M damage to the US tax payers (assuming the proof part), they should be on the hook to repay that, if they can't they should go bankrupt like anyone else who owes more money than they have.
Depends on the details of the situations. The dude who tried to sneak coke past border security has poor judgement. The dude who rubber stamped the Friday at 4:55 test after every test that week passed is just human.
it's really hard to push onto employees as it's hard to determine if they were acting on their own or being pressured into doing such things. (as even acting on one's own can be motivated by unhealthy stress or such things which can be outside of their control / responsibility.)
that being said, for the incurred loss, 46 million is tiny.
If it was an individual, then the company itself should have discovered it years ago through an internal audit or a secondary check / re-certification - they didn't do that. They had fifteen years or however long it was to find that out.
They didn't catch it themselves, they didn't take care of it themselves; that means the company as a whole is responsible.
Personally, I think it should be the board + CEO who goes to prison when it is a corporation that does something like this. Don't trust someone enough? Don't hire!
Disclosure: My ulterior motive is that I think corporations are way too big and also I found the Sun Tzu story of killing a general very interesting.
> Sun Tzu said: "If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame." So he started drilling them again, and this time gave the order "Left turn," whereupon the girls once more burst into fits of laughter. Sun Tzu: "If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders ARE clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers."
> So saying, he ordered the leaders of the two companies to be beheaded. Now the king of Wu was watching the scene from the top of a raised pavilion; and when he saw that his favorite concubines were about to be executed, he was greatly alarmed and hurriedly sent down the following message: "We are now quite satisfied as to our general's ability to handle troops. If We are bereft of these two concubines, our meat and drink will lose their savor. It is our wish that they shall not be beheaded." Sun Tzu replied: "Having once received His Majesty's commission to be the general of his forces, there are certain commands of His Majesty which, acting in that capacity, I am unable to accept." Accordingly, he had the two leaders beheaded, and straightway installed the pair next in order as leaders in their place. When this had been done, the drum was sounded for the drill once more; and the girls went through all the evolutions, turning to the right or to the left, marching ahead or wheeling back, kneeling or standing, with perfect accuracy and precision, not venturing to utter a sound.
This is 100% impossible to carry out at the scale of a corporation. You don't have enough data about a person staging in front of you to bet a prison sentence on their never ever doing anything wrong, maybe unless you've been friends with them for years. The board+CEO have even less visibility and control over hiring decisions made by middle managers. You would make every leadership position a game of Russian roulette.
I think his point is that this type of environment would discourage or essentially ban the type of huge corporation that depends on unaccountable middle managers to offload liability.
The DOJ press release linked elsewhere in the thread says at least one employee was jailed:
"Second, from in or about 2002 through September 2015, Dennis Balius, the SPI testing lab supervisor, led a scheme to alter tests within SPI’s computerized systems and provide false certifications with the altered results to customers. Balius also instructed employees to violate other testing standards, such as increasing the speed of the testing machines or cutting samples in a manner that did not meet the required specifications. Balius pleaded guilty in July 2017 and was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay over $170,000 in restitution."
The penalty is only $46 million because they've yet to be able to determine (like in court) that the claimed loses (like the failed launches) were actually a consequence of SPI's fraud. The damages are likely on the scale of the orders actually made.
