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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • There aren’t really prosecutorial appeals for grand jury “no true bill” decisions, so this won’t be going to the supremes at this stage. However, there’s also nothing to prevent the prosecutors from trying again in front of a new grand jury. In practice this is pretty uncommon, likely because the judges presiding over grand juries take a dim view of lawyers who waste the court’s time (much like any other judge).

    A common reason to seek a new indictment would be if new evidence has come to light, and thus there are new facts for a new grand jury to weigh. I wouldn’t be surprised if these prosecutors try again, even though it’s a stupid move. Motiviations like “maintain credibility with my peers” and “don’t be an incompetent nincompoop” are clearly foreign to Trump’s DoJ.

    On a related note, double jeopard prevents someone from being tried twice for the same crime, but an indictment isn’t a trial. A trial does not start until after a grand jury returns an indictment, so double jeopardy doesn’t apply here.


  • It’s too early to lay blame. Every commercial aircraft has very clear maintenance schedules, including procedures that would have included a through inspection of the part that appears to have failed on this plane (aft lug to which the engine pylon was attached). The NTSB prelim report does not call out any failure to adhere to the maintenance schedule.

    The NTSB investigation has found signs of metal fatigue in the part that failed, but the defect was located such that it wouldn’t have been visible on an external inspection. The next inspection procedure that could have caught the issue wasn’t due to be performed until another 8000 or so cycles (takeoffs and landings) on that particular airframe. This looks like it’s shaping up to be an engineering failure, where the manufacturer of the aircraft has significantly overestimated the durability of this particular part.