You never know what’s going to set the Obama administration off, huh? Well, we do, actually: embarrass them. That’ll get the wheels of retribution turning:
Per US Attorney, gyrocopter guy has been indicted, Including charge for falsely labeling gyrocopter as postal carrier pic.twitter.com/jRD3Gg8qX1
— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) May 20, 2015
Assuming they convict Doug Hughes – and it’s hard to see how they can’t, given that Doug Hughes pretty much openly and illegally flew a gyrocopter into DC airspace and landed it on Capitol Hill – that works out to a maximum of 10 and a half years in jail. Dude’s in his early sixties: stick him in jail for a decade and maybe he doesn’t come out. I dunno. I think that Doug Hughes doesn’t have a freaking clue about what constitutes proper ‘free speech,’ but if we’re going to be putting people in jail for that then… let’s not put people in jail for that.
And, yes, I know that’s not what he’s being threatened with hard time for. Except that what he’s really being threatened with hard time for – to wit, embarrassing the federal government – isn’t really too nice, either. Besides, I am happy to be merciful when it comes to crimes where nobody got hurt and the perpetrator made it a point to keep people from getting hurt. Call me a sentimentalist.
I agree, give him a probationary sentence (10 year flight ban?), a hefty fine, and security in the knowledge he’ll never work for the Government ever again, then send him on his way back to Florida. If he is imprisoned that will just feed fire into the meme that he is some sort of ‘political prisoner’ not something I want to see said of this country.
If anything this man did his country a service, and that is he exposed the lack of vigilance within our Nation’s capital, and hopefully the right people learned from it (Granted that was not the florida-man’s* intension)
* perhaps its too early to call it a classical reference, but it will be.
Also, the operating of an aircraft without proper registration and license is a felony, but violating national defense airspace is only a misdemeanor?!?
Our law code is messed up.
Yes it is. The maximum on Bank robbery is 20 years, 25 years with a gun. The evil bank fraud max is 30 years.
(1) Stupid should hurt.
(2) Would those sentences be served consecutively or concurrently? I know in Michigan that unless stated otherwise in the statute sentences are served concurrent with one another, not consecutively.
Consecutively. At least the Felony sentences. And it looks like the U.S. Attorney is pushing to get as many years as possible.
Even if they did sentence him to the maximum jail time on each of those sentences he would only serve about half that time in jail and then be let out on parole.