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Scotsman gets free introduction to American jurisprudence in East Boston
By adamg on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 8:28am
John Murray of Glasgow is scheduled for arraignment in East Boston District Court this morning on charges of "interfering with the flight crew" on a flight from Philadelphia to London overnight. The Suffolk County District Attorney's office says he refused to stop blocking the aisle on the US Airways flight and became belligerent and disruptive enough to force the flight crew to land the plane at Logan to get him off.
Innocent, etc.
Free tagging:
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Comments
Almost made it to Canada
Philly to Boston flight path.
Any reason why they dropped Mr. Murray in Boston, rather than in Bangor, which certainly would've been less out of the way?
I just was going to post the same thing...
My guess is that they had to do a extended fuel dump and that Logan has better facilities for handling refueling, restocking and immigration facilities at that time of night than Bangor. Not to mention US Airways serves Logan and its base there may be more equipped to handle an A330 full of people (its Bangor flights are contracted out).
They wanted to avoid the
They wanted to avoid the Langoliers at Bangor.
So you heard about how he
So you heard about how he was tearing the cocktail napkins into narrow strips, huh?
Bail set at $300
And he's supposed to show up in East Boston District Court on Dec. 1, the Suffolk County DA's office says.
state crime?
According to my two minutes of research, Interference With a Flight Crew is a federal offense under 49 U.S.C. § 46504.
Anyone know what the Suffolk DA is charging him with? Is there some analog state crime?
Jake?
We've got it as interfering
We've got it as interfering with the operation of an aircraft under Ch. 90, Sect. 40, of the Massachusetts General Laws. The relevant text allows for the interferer to be
"...placed in charge of a police officer in the city or town where the aircraft next lands within the commonwealth, to be taken to a lawful place of detention. Complaint shall be made against the person arrested, by the officer taking him to the place of detention, to a district court having jurisdiction over such offenses committed in the city or town where such person is detained, and such court shall have jurisdiction of the case."
The punishment comes under Ch. 90, Sect. 44, which allows for a punishment of "a fine of not less than ten nor more than five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment for not less than one month nor more than six months, or both."
There are an awful lot of overlaps between state and federal statutes. In my experience, most cases with federal potential come through the DA's office first and are later adopted by the feds, though they certainly run and build their own investigations that go straight to the Moakley Courthouse without ever stopping in a municipal court.
Is this because locals have jails?
Could this overlap result from the need to detain and process the unruly person, which the fed might not have handy facilities to do?