Today is almost the end of day three of deliberations, and I’m liking this jury more and more as time goes on. Not one that considers myself important as opposed to the way the King County Deputy Prosecutor tried to falsely portray me to the jury, their careful deliberations seem to indicate that they at least place some value on my fate.

This morning the question from the jury that I blogged about yesterday was put on the record, along with my attorney’s objection to the extra term “no” that could indicate which way the judge wanted this whole thing to go. When juries are in deliberations, they are supposed to be left alone if at all possible, so that nothing the prosecutor, judge, or my attorney does sways their deliberations in any way. To that end, responses to jury’s questions are supposed to be as bland as possible, telling the jury what they can consider (usually just repeating the relevant part of the jury instructions) as opposed to what they can’t. But the judge wanted apparently to get her editorial comment on the specific issue anyway.

Then the judge, out of the blue, brought up the extensive coverage of problems at the FAA, and said that she wanted to take the extraordinary step of bringing the jury out in order to tell them what to ignore on the news and related jury instructions. This showed even more bias, I believe, in the proactive way she is censoring what the jury can see outside the courtroom. I highly doubt she would have done the same thing if the news was all glowing reports on how the FAA and Boeing were so great and how safe airline travel was this week.

Andrea James, an angel of a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer—the only reporter with the judgment to give the trial the coverage it deserves—wrote an article on this morning’s happenings that is only on their website at the moment, but I think will be in their paper tomorrow:

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/ ... man04.html

Jurors told not to consider whistle-blowing laws
Last updated April 3, 2008 11:18 a.m. PT
By ANDREA JAMES
P-I REPORTER
A King County Superior Court judge told jurors who are deliberating the fate of Gerald Eastman, a former Boeing quality assurance inspector, that whistle-blowing laws should not be considered.
Jurors continued into their third day of deliberations Thursday. They had asked the judge the day before, "May we consider whistle-blowing laws as they pertain to this case?"
Judge Monica Benton told them that they couldn't consider other laws, nor do outside research.
Eastman faces 16 felony counts of computer trespass, after having downloaded Boeing documents and providing some of them to a Seattle Times reporter.
He said he did so to highlight corruption at Boeing and a shoddy inspection process for new planes. The King County prosecutor has charged that some of the resulting articles had nothing to do with airplane safety.
Defense attorney Ramona Brandes told the judge on Thursday morning, "I felt the court's instruction went beyond what was necessary."
Judge Benton also raised concerns to the attorneys about national news regarding "inflammatory discussion about airline safety."
While the jury deliberates in Seattle, a Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., has revealed that the Federal Aviation Administration looked the other way even after inspectors found cracks in Southwest Airlines planes. When FAA inspectors complained about the safety problems, they were threatened with dismissal, according to a report Thursday by the New York Times.
Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines have recently grounded scores of Boeing planes. U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., who has charged that the FAA has a "culture of coziness" with the carriers it regulates, leads the hearing.
Benton brought jurors into the courtroom to again remind them not to consider outside evidence or information when deliberating the case. The jurors are not allowed to read or watch any media reports regarding Eastman or Boeing.
Eastman said he felt somewhat vindicated by the national reports about poor FAA oversight. One of his complaints as a Boeing employee and after his arrest was that the FAA overlooked faulty inspections at Boeing.
While working as a quality assurance inspector in Tukwila, he wrote to Boeing management, the FAA and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell about what he viewed as fraud in Boeing's airplane inspection process.
"With everything that's going on, you'd think somebody would be interested that the same thing is going on at Boeing," Eastman said. "It's nice it's coming out now -- no matter what happens to me."
© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

End of article.

This is a great article because it finally touches upon the important issues my trial raises—not my own fate, but what Boeing and the King County Prosecutor’s office do to whistleblowers that let any of Boeing’s numerous skeletons of law breaking out of the closet, and more importantly, it calls attention to the fact I had long been laboring to get the correct level of attention on so it could be ended at long last for the safety of the public—that Boeing and the FAA are engaging in fraud in a similar but more pervasive and serious way than the FAA has engaged in with airlines, including the relationships in the news today, as well as the one between Alaska Airlines management and the FAA just prior to the tragic and avoidable (if the FAA had done their jobs of oversight and had actually investigated reports of serious noncompliances bordering on fraud in Alaska Airlines' maintenance operations) crash of Alaska Airlines flight 261.

"Inflammatory discussion about airline safety." "Inflammatory"? "Discussion"? That is how Judge Benton opined today in court on the serious news of intentionally lax FAA oversight and the much greater danger it undeniably placed airline passengers in. True, this FAA management fraud with the airlines in the news today would be quite inflammatory if an airliner crashed because of it—just not in the way she apparently meant the word. And the mere fact the news is reporting it doesn’t make it a “discussion.” Such “discussions” are only allowed in the editorial pages of the news, not the news itself. You had better hope that you don’t get a judge like this if you are also accused of a crime you didn’t commit. But I'm told the whole court system in King County is tilted against the defendant, so the judge in this case is apparently just doing what other judges here do--only more in earnest. If judges begin to expicitly follow the law and as a consequence rule in a defendant's favor, negating months or years of police work and work by the prosecution, then the powerful Police Guilds will line up in opposition to that judge at the next election, getting them replaced. Not an incentive by far for judges to be fair in this county.