Nadia Milleron, whose daughter, Samya Stumo, was killed in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, holds a sign of crash victims behind Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, foreground, during the Senate Commerce, Science Committee hearing and Transport in Hart Building on aviation safety and the future of the Boeing 737 MAX on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.
Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
A federal judge rejected this Boeing's plea deal is related to a criminal fraud charge stemming from fatal crashes of his 737 Max aircraft.
U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas expressed concern in his decision Thursday that a government-appointed monitor, a condition of the plea deal, would include diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
He wrote that “in light of the foregoing, the Court is not convinced that the government will not select a monitor without race-based considerations and thus will not act in a non-discriminatory manner. In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interests of justice that the public has confidence that this monitor selection is made solely on the basis of competence.”
In October, O'Connor ordered Boeing and the Justice Department to provide details on diversity, equity and inclusion policies when the monitor is selected.
The court gave Boeing and the Justice Department 30 days to decide how to proceed, according to a court document filed Thursday.
In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by misleading regulators about the inclusion of a flight control system on the Max that was later implicated in the two crashes — a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopia Airlines flight in March 2019. All 346 people on the flights were killed.
Boeing and the Justice Department did not immediately comment.
The victims' relatives had objected to a government-appointed monitor as a condition of the plea deal and sought more input. They called it a “love deal.”
Erin Applebaum, an attorney representing one of the victim's relatives, applauded the deal. “We expect a significant renegotiation of the plea agreement that includes terms that are truly commensurate with the seriousness of Boeing's crimes,” Applebaum said in a statement. “It is time for the DOJ to end the lenient treatment of Boeing and demand real accountability.”
The deal was intended to allow Boeing to avoid a trial just as the company was trying to get the business back on solid footing after a door burst on a mid-air flight early this year, renewing a safety crisis at the manufacturer arose.
The new plea deal came after the Justice Department said in May that Boeing violated a previous plea deal, which was set to expire days after the door plug blew off the 737 Max 9 on Jan. 5. O'Connor said in his decision Thursday that it is “not clear what actions Boeing may have taken to violate the deferred prosecution agreement.”
Under the new settlement, Boeing would have to pay a fine of up to $487.2 million. However, the Justice Department recommended that the court credit Boeing with half of the amount it paid under a previous agreement, resulting in a $243.6 million fine.
