An interesting thing happened today around 3 PM as the jury deliberated in my case.

I and my attorney were told to stay within a fifteen minute radius as noted in the earlier today blog in case of a verdict or if the jury had a question.

It turns out the jury had a question at the time noted above. The question itself may give some insight into the jury's deliberations for those of you who are good at that sort of thing.

The jury's question was (paraprasing, I'm sure), "Can we consider whistleblower laws in our deliberations?"

Pretty interesting, huh? The judge took away our whole necessity/whistleblower defense, yet somehow the jury seems to be seeing the true nature of the case. Perhaps they see the case as I see it--as a not too thinly veiled attempt at whistleblower retaliation by Boeing and Dan Satterberg, the new King County Attorney Boeing and Perkins Coie were instrumental in installing after Norm Maleng's death.

What is somewhat amusing in this is that it was the Deputy Prosecutor, Scott Peterson, who brought up the fact I was a whistleblower most frequently, although his derisive tone in branding me as such must have telegraphed to the jury. I believe I only mentioned it in testimony once, when I said answered something to the effect of "during my attempts to blow the whistle on Boeing."

Of course, if you've read my previous blogs on the trial, you already know what the judge told the jury--she gave them a one word answer--simply the word "no." The jury then presumably deliberated for another hour after that before the customary time of quitting, 4 PM. The judge's answer may have been one of the few correct rulings she's made thusfar, in my humble opinion, although I'm told that the answer "consider the law as presented to you in court" is the correct answer, rather than weighing in at all either way so as to not bias the jury. As the judge is apparently not following that precedent, she simply told them to stop considering the fact I was a whistleblower, via her unambiguously on which side of the issue she was answer.

I'm told that a verdict would probably be returned this week, although I'm surprised the jury went home today without a verdict.

Tomorrow I have to be before the judge at 9 AM in order to put the jury's question and the judge's answer officially on the record. Then the fifteen minute radius wait continues.

I now have some pretty high hopes and respect for the jury, trying to find a way out of the biasedly drawn box the judge and prosecutor have put me in so that they return a guilty verdict. I think they are smart enough to know the bias of the court, and will ultimately return a verdict per the law, not just how the prosecutor and Boeing want the verdict to be, which any first year law student I think could tell isn't per the law in my case.

I apologize for not blogging as much as I should have been, especially considering the curious lack of press coverage of my trial.

The Jury is just entering the sixth hour of deliberations on my fate. I don't know if that's good or bad that it seems to be perhaps longer than I would have guessed. I suppose the longer the better, within limits, unless other jurors are trying to wear down the jurors who saw through the smoke and mirrors arguments put forth by the King County Deputy Prosecutor, and have arrived at the truth, and are sticking to it to prevent an injustice to be done to me and all whistleblowers like me at Boeing's behest.

I like the fact they seem to be not making any snap judgments on the matter, and that even though I don't remotely resemble George Clooney, they nonetheless appear to consider my fate important.

The jury began deliberations yesterday, about 2 PM PST. I'm told to be within a fifteen minute radius of the court, so I'm blogging from the courthouse library.

The fifteen minute radius thing shows a little bit of bias by the court because, even though the court rules say 15 minutes, the practice put in place by all judges except mine is 30 minutes, probably due to the fact we are in a major city in which it is difficult to get around in. My attorney told the judge it would be difficult for her to get from her nearby (6 or so blocks away) office to the courtroom in fifteen minutes. Of course, the judge stayed with the fifteen minute radius order as the Prosecutor's office is just two flights of stairs above her courtroom. This is her first case in King County Superior Court, a judge who used to work as a prosecutor in the Criminal Division with Dan Satterberg in the early 90's, I'm told. Dan Satterberg is the newly elected (By Boeing and Perkins Coie contributions and a Perkins Coie partner managing his campaign) King County Prosecutor who the Deputy Prosecutor, Scott Peterson, who argued the prosecution's side in my trial, directly reports to.

More to be added later today.

Thanks for your kind prayers and support. At least it is heartening that I know many people are praying for me, my family, and that justice ultimately be served, and no one is praying for Boeing and their minions in the Prosecutor's office to prevail.

Gerry

The Last Inspector

Yesterday, Tuesday, was when the trial of me by misinformation began.

The day didn't start well, as a combination of me leaving later than usual and unbelievably heavy traffic when most people should have already been at work (no, the recession hasn't hit this area yet) resulted in me being over fifteen minutes late to court. Unlike other days when things didn't get under way until a half hour after the supposed to be 9:00 AM starting time, they were waiting for me to arrive to get started. I got admonished by the judge to be on time or there was the jail option to ensure I was there on time. I apologized to the judge for my tardiness. It's things like these that make you wonder whether "innocent until proven guilty" is really what is practiced in court.

At about 10:00 AM the jury was finalized--14 jurors with two of them unknowing alternates (so they will pay attention to the trial).

Then Scott Peterson, the Senior Deputy Attorney likely the next in line to the Republican dynasty of King County Prosecutors once Dan Satterberg dies or is removed from office for some other reason, began his opening statement full of mistruths.

He cast me as a "slow and methodical" worker, somehow infering I wasn't doing my job well, when the opposite was true. Yes, I was slower than other inspectors who rollerstamped to a greater degree than I was forced to, but that is just the law of mature--it takes more time to do something and stamp the paperwork to indicate you did it than not doing the work and just stamping the paper off.

And for just doing my job to a minimal level not even close to the level of what inspectors were supposed to do per the FAA approved quality system I am branded as "slow and methodical."

That really shows how twisted the justice system is and how far Boeing's "quality system" has devolved--when you don't join in wholeheartedly in with the fraud of the rollerstamping inspectors who just pretend to inspect the airplane before they falsify paperwork stating they did, the Senior Deputy Prosecutor of the King County Fraud Department accuses you of being "slow and methodical" for not joining fully in that fraud. No wonder he and Dan Satterberg have totally ignored Boeing's actual breaking of the law mutiple times, and have even gone on the offense for Boeing in trying to prevent any evidence of Boeing crimes from being discussed during the trial.

He also bald faced lied when he stated that I "spent several hours each day he should have been working "navigating file shares." Wrong! I did my research for my report on Boeing/FAA fraud to the DOT OIG only when there wasn't any other work to do.

He also infered that I was asking for money to keep quite about Boeing's law breaking, which is also diametrically opposed to the truth. Apparently he misreads everything to mean what he wants it to mean, rather than what it plainly means to any unbiased person.

He then tried to trump up my computer knowledge level way beyond what it is. This was another lie in order to falsely convict me on his unwarranted charges. In fact, any Boeing employee could access the same information I did with minimal computer knowledge. But the truth won't get him his unjust conviction, so he had to fabricate and prevaricate.

At about 11:00 AM my attorney, Ramona Brandes, began our opening statement. I think she did very well. At least she didn't lie about anything like the prosecutor did. She said I was not the most "succinct writer," which is perhaps an understatement. She made it clear that they were accusing me of "hacking" Boeing's computer system when I did nothing of the sort, and only accessed areas of the computer system I had permissions to access. She said I was no "white knight." Ain't that the truth. Although I wished I could save the public from the dangers to them from Boeing's fraudulent "quality assurance" activities, the public needed someone who gave more to it than I, even though I did little else for a few years but try to go through all the proper channels to get Boeing and FAA fraud ended. I'm human. Perhaps if you were trying to protect the lives of the public from a megalith corporation you too might make some well meaning mistakes as well.

Then, my last supervisor at Boeing took the stand. Even though I knew just how corrupt he was, I was happy that he did not seem to testify at all times to what they had scripted him to. A big deal was made about the two times out of thousands of writeups of discrepancies by me when he questioned whether they were just "flaws" and not "defects." QA professionals will laugh, but that is truly how far they had to dig to get negative stuff to testify about against me.

He said that I was "kind of a loner," which was a bogus comment. I got along very well with my coworkers, and joked and talked with them any chance I could. Of course, I did do more actual work than other inspectors who spent more time bullshitting than working, but that doesn't make me a "loner."

My former supervisor proved today what I knew was still the case--things are as bad in QA at Boeing as they ever were. Boeing still has not reformed their quality system into the minimal state where at least the Quality Supervisors, like my former boss testifying was, actually knew what their real job functions were in Quality.

He showed the same care less attitude about his real job duties that I witnessed in him and multiple other QA supervisors. He actually testified that he didn't check whether his inspectors were doing their jobs as he hadn't gotten enough complaints from customers to make him concerned enough to do so. Yep, the old rollerstamping quality system is still in full swing at Boeing, and QA supervisors are intentionally asleep at the wheel of their actual FAA required duties, which say nothing about how much product has to be pushed out the door uninspected.

Then Marie T. Farrelly was called to testify by the prosecutor (she is the Boeing "fixer" I blogged of earlier. I had only talked to her on the phone and emailed her before, and maybe saw one picture of her.

She was much tinier and more frail than I imagined. I had thought of her as a more robust, fighter type woman.

The prosecutor and her tried to use a few sentences out of a many page letter to Doug Bain, former Chief Counsel to Boeing, to try to show I was threatening to go to the press with Boeing's QA fraud if I wasn't paid off. Nothing could be further form the truth, yet they knowingly tried to parlay that falsehhod to the jury.

On cross examination, my lawyer finally put the letter in context, and got Farrelly to admit that the letter really showed that I did not want to be paid off to "go away," and that I required that Boeing fix the items I reported to the FAA themselves, including corrupt QA management, with me agreeing to testify if need be against such managers in court for Boeing at any time. "He wanted to ensure his allegations were investigated," she admitted.

That was pretty much it for her, besides some talk about the bogus audit of just my work area she had done after my last conversation with her.

Then Anthony Maus came to the stand, a "Senior Manager of Corporate security" who's comment in my 2006 interview with him that "Boeing is the most arrogant company on the face of the planet" is still one of my favorite quotes about Boeing.

I'll cover what he stated later. He takes the stand again today.

Gerry

The Last Inspector

Not much to report from thr trial by Boeing of me from yesterday, as almost the whole day was spent in jury selection.

I did learn an interesting fact, however, about Vanessa Lee, the lead Boeing Legal Attorney representing and reporting back to Boeing Legal and Boeing executive management progress and strategy in the trial.

I learned that she is "under immense pressure" by Boeing to secure my (unjust) conviction. So much so that pressure has taken its toll on her emotionally.

She was the Boeing Legal attorney that has been involved in trying to secure my demise from the outset, having me followed home and who knows what else before I was arrested and my house ransacked for evidence to "hang" me with.

Also, Peter Conte, head purveyor of only positive news and twister of the truth into something different for Boeing, showed up at the trial in street clothes as opposed to his Armani suit befitting a Boeing executive of his pay grade, which shows the importance of this trial, as Boeing's lead spinner is now in attendance.

That's it for now.

Gerry

I haven’t traveled by railroad since so long ago I don’t know when it was, but last week I rode uninterrupted all week long on a train in which I was the sole occupant with a destination as predetermined as any scheduled Amtrak service—with this unstoppable train’s destination in effect set to the edge of a cliff of a deep, deep chasm by Boeing, the King County Prosecutor Boeing largely financed last November’s election of, and a compliant (thufar) King County Superior Court system.

Railroaded. There is no other way to describe last week’s sequence of events in pre-trial hearings before the trial this week with its all but certain similarly predetermined ending to please corrupt Boeing management and attorneys who really should be on this train, albeit I would at least grant them a fair trial despite the vastly greater crimes they committed than I am being railroaded for supposedly committing---as opposed to the unfair trial they are ensuring for me with money funneled to the King County Prosecutor’s successful (because of it) campaign, executives conferring strategy against me in closed door meetings at Boeing’s headquarters, taking precious time away from their own continuing and complex fraudulent activities, and communication via Blackberry device from and to the courtroom to ensure the train they put me on isn’t detoured in any way.

This railroading started in earnest Monday at a hearing before Superior Court Judge Carey where my attorney tried to stop the railroading before it began by asking for just a week’s continuance until we could finally get the information requested from my seized computer that was needed for my defense that we were promised by the prosecutor the previous Friday, so at least we had the weekend to review it and incorporate it in my defense before trial. The prosecution and Seattle Police Department failed to produce the information required for my defense despite almost the full week’s time to do so under the guise that the terms we wanted to search my computer for were crashing the police database of what was on my computer. They tried to search for all of the 56 search terms we requested at the same time, which “crashed” their database, they said. Both my attorney and I, not as computer savvy as them by far, wondered why they couldn’t search for each term separately, and maybe get us at least some of the requested information. The answer seemed clear—it was just an excuse to withhold the information needed for my defense from us.

The prosecution’s case is based on information they supposedly found on my computer that supposedly relates to information found in articles in the Seattle Times. While they are using such information they supposedly gleaned from my computer to prosecute me, they are not willing to let me access my own files on my computer in order to prepare a defense to those charges, yet another reason I have been in effect placed on a train with sabotaged brakes by the “working together” team of the King County Prosecutor and Boeing with the destination of my doom in order to “kill the messenger” of Boeing’s vastly greater and numerous crimes against myriad innocent commercial airplane travelers and against our nation’s security itself.

The prosecutor argued to judge Carey that, even if there was proof on my computer that Boeing was violating laws and regulations by intentionally placing airline passengers at greater risk of death for more bottom line dollars by not doing required inspections, then that would not prevent him from convicting me on the (relatively very petty) charges against me. The judge seemed to agree, and abetted the prosecutor’s “don’t give a damn” attitude about airline passenger safety and Boeing’s breaking of laws and regulations that placed them at much greater risk, and kept the train I was on running on its predetermined destination despite withholding of essential information and the time to review it in order to present our defense to the retaliatory charges making the term “malicious prosecution” inadequate to describe the situation. The judge denied our motion for continuance for a week and placed the case on the trial schedule as a priority for the next judge available for a trial to take.

I then left, as my attorney said it would likely be the next day at the earliest when a judge could be found for such a long case. However, just a few hours later my attorney called me an told me to be back at the courthouse ASAP, as a judge had already been assigned to the case! By the time I got there, the pre-trial motion part of my persecution had already begun.

The judge assigned to the case was Monica J. Benton, who I just this weekend learned was appointed by Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire, which was a shocking revelation after watching her rule against the well reasoned motions backed by numerous case law pecedents all week.

My attorney would present detailed and very relevant case law and arguments to justify our motions, then the prosecutor would give some inane interpretation of cases almost totally unrelated to the issue at hand and then present his obviously highly biased personal opinion (not reasoned legal argument based on the facts) of that case and how it should negate our motion, then the judge would rule against us (and the law) and for his personally and intentionally twisted opinions of vaguely related cases, everytime.

It was disillusioning, to say the least. First you see wholesale corruption placing lives at risk at Boeing, then you find out the enabling corruption in FAA management that intentionally rollerstamps its oversight role of Boeing as “it’s all good” without any real oversight of Boeing at all. Then you find out the enabling DOT OIG that will not act against Boeing or FAA management itself, no matter the merits of the case. Then you find out that your own county justice system is highly biased, and next to impossible to get a fair trial in.

My attorney told me, after I indicated to her my dismay at her (what I saw to be “slam dunk” legal argument based) motions all getting ruled against by the judge, that people new to the justice system there are shocked, like I was, when they find out how biased the whole court system is against the defendant. I couldn’t have agreed more with her on that point.

One of the days the prosecutor even had the gall to ask the judge to admonish (or a similar term) my attorney for stating to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that, “Boeing is a very big presence here in this part of the country. I think that the prosecutor is under a lot of pressure from Boeing," to which any reasoned person would say “duh” to, however the prosecutor feigned outrage at such a suggestion that he was somehow under pressure from Boeing despite having practically been living with two or three Boeing Legal attorneys and one attorney hired by Boeing from an outside law firm for the past nearly two years, and especially the past few weeks. At least the judge didn’t bite on that one. My attorney and the Deputy Prosecutor had seemed to be getting along well with each other during various hearings, probably due to my attorney’s belief that being adversarial when not before a judge is not in the client’s best interest, however this undeserved jab by him in an effort to prejudice the judge may change things.

But the most damaging thing that occurred last week in the many rulings against us by a biased court system was the motion the judge granted taking away our right to argue a necessity defense for my actions. Of course, the only reason I ever contacted the press was to go public with my story after all other avenues had failed. I knew many lives would be placed at greater and greater risk as time went on if Boeing’s fraud in quality assurance management was permitted to continue unabated. However that sole reason for my actions will not be allowed to be presented in my defense due to the judge’s ruling.

Interestingly, this again hinged on what was obviously a bogus and biased argument by the Deputy Prosecutor. He cited a case about an elk that had charged a person who shot it outside of hunting season. The court found that he acted on necessity even though he broke the law, and could not be charged. The Deputy Prosecutor then (intentionally?) misquoted the case and stated the case made it clear that a necessity defense could only be presented if I was being compelled to commit a crime “by a force of nature” such as the charging elk. He again reiterated that even if my allegations of rollerstamping at Boeing are true, then that doesn’t deter him in any way from charging me with crimes they chose to charge me with. My attorney correctly quoted the case law and stated that in addition to “force of nature,” “the pressure of circumstance,” as was the case in my situation, was also permitted as a necessity defense.

The judge then said case law did support a “pressure of circumstance” necessity defense, but then she ruled against us because I wasn’t “personally endangered”! Quite unbelievable, isn’t it? I could only defend myself with the necessity defense if I was defending myself from danger. I couldn’t to so to protect the millions of lives Boeing had intentionally placed in danger in order to reap greater profit margins while Death also reaped greater returns. That’s justice for you. Or, more aptly, injustice, perhaps.

So, I guess the moral is that you had better not intervene and try to save anyone from harm by another person, lest you hurt the perpetrator while saving someone’s life and end up doing time for that, while the attacker walks free to hurt, maim, and kill again. Doesn’t sound logical to me, but that appears to be the law of this State, anyway. It’s a big disincentive for people to do the right thing, which is no doubt what Boeing and the Deputy Prosecutor are trying to ensure by my trial. Do gooders beware, as unethical companies and prosecutors have free reign, at least in King County.

Due to the current King County Prosecutor impersonating a just deceased and respected Republican King County Prosecutor, as well as donations and the running of his campaign by Boeing’s chief outside law firm, the current Republican King County Prosecutor was elected last November, a mistake by an electorate that obviously didn’t know the man at all, and who could blame them as he was doing his best to impersonate his dead boss to gain his job, running on his bosses’ accomplishments and not his own. The deceased former King County Prosecutor, Norm Maleng, was perhaps the only Republican in King County government (which are few) that was well respected. Indeed, Mr. Maleng’s death hurt the prosecutor’s office immensely, allowing the current King County Prosecutor to gain office by what was so blatant an impersonation of Mr. Maleng it could be charged, I believe, as a case of identity theft. What has resulted is a fascist prosecutors office that ignores purposely and openly crimes by corporations and white collar criminals, while holding those “little guys” not well connected to it to the law. It is no accident, perhaps, that the current King County Prosecutor touted as an accomplishment his running a organization of young Republican boys/men, the nearest thing I’ve heard to similar groups Adolph Hitler founded. Not to say that the group has the beliefs of the Nazis outside the general Republican belief that fascism is good (government controlled by and ran for corporations rather than the people) and socialism like social security is bad. So the King County Prosecutor’s office being run out of “Boeing’s pants” is no great surprise. If my predetermined conviction does any good, it will be in exposing these “working together” crooks for what they really are, and for what a justice system they promise to put in place in the future if left in power, ala George Orwell’s “1984” justice system.

We lost all the battles last week, despite having the law behind us. The prosecutor won his arguments solely by saying, “I believe,” then stating how the case law really meant the opposite of what it actually meant. Too bad the judge for the most part bought it.

We did win a few small points. While we sought substantive relief before trial in reducing the number of charges due to overlap and other legal precedents, the judge allowed us to argue that point to a jury only following my predetermined conviction. Never mind that the jury would be prejudiced by the number of charges against me during the trial itself, making a conviction more likely, as that is the destination already chosen for this “railroad” I am on.

Another interesting fact is that the prosecutor sought to further suck up to Boeing by protecting boeing from another one of their crimes—Sarbanes Oxley violations. The prosecutor presented a motion to exclude any testimony about violations of the SOX laws by Boeing by Boeing not protecting their financial data from access and manipulation as required. My attorney is working on our response to that motion.

And yet another interesting fact is that the “star” Boeing witness against me, Mike Bair, failed former head of the 787 program and still on Boeing’s payroll for reasons unknown, stated in his interview with my attorney that the leak to the Seattle Times of Boeing Commercial Airplane’s CEO’s recommendation to Boeing’s Board of Directors of Everett as winner of the site selection contest for final assembly site of the 787 had pressured the board to go with that selection, although he also said it could have made them go the other way, I guess for spite purposes. He called the leak “a brush with death.” What isn’t known is why he testified about that leak as I am not charged with that leak to the press. Perhaps it is just because he, just as Boeing’s Corporate Security Manager said to me during my interview the day after I was released from jail after my arrest, believes I was the source of that leak, and forced Boeing’s Board to select Everett with all of its “union problems” over the Board’s preferred site for final assembly of South Carolina. I detail Boeing’s belief I forced them to site the 787 in Washington State on my website. Bair’s interview only confirms their belief that is the case, which is not the true reason they are retaliating against me via these unfounded charges.

Gerry

The Last Inspector