Nobody else is either. But the issue here is that the hallucinating pilot did not intend to kill, or attempt to kill, or harm in any way, that plane full of people.
No intent, no crime of murder (or attempted murder).
And nobody here is saying that the hallucinating pilot shouldn’t be punished for negligence, or some other charge appropriate to what he actually did. You’re the one who keeps incorrectly claiming that his punishment should somehow reflect the initial and subsequently dropped charges of attempted murder, which he didn’t do.
(Fiscal “conservatives”, lol. They complain so hard about alleged government waste and inefficiency, except in the (generally far more numerous) cases where the government is wasting money by imposing lengthy prison sentences on perpetrators who could be just as effectively and far more cheaply kept from recidivism in some other way. Sure, let’s pretend that this irresponsibly substance-abusing and subsequently dangerously hallucinating pilot was actually attempting murder, just so we have an excuse to punish him harder and more expensively!)
I repeat: Nobody here is saying that the pilot in question shouldn’t be punished for whatever crime(s) he is found by the courts to have actually committed.
What you seem unable or unwilling to recognize is that attempted murder is not one of the crimes that the pilot stands accused of committing (which is why the initial attempted-murder charges were dropped), and that therefore punishment standards for attempted murder do not apply in this case.
He has two separate sets of consequences. Procedural, with the loss of his credentials to fly, and legal. Those are separate, though proceeding from the same initial act. (I suppose you could count the physical effects of the drug as another separate set of consequences).
Who in this thread is saying that “Losing his job should be punishment enough”? It’s been noted that the loss of his pilot’s license is a punishment, but I’m not seeing anybody suggesting that it was unjust to try and convict him for the crime(s) he actually committed.
And indeed, as the linked article describes, the pilot has been punished by the legal system for what he did:
I don’t see anybody here objecting in any way to those punishments being imposed on Emerson, in addition to the termination of his career.
The fact he is launching a new career promoting the health of pilots to, one hopes, help prevent someone else making the mistakes he did should be in his favor. He may be of more benefit to society overall doing that work than sitting in a jail cell.
Maybe. I couldn’t prove it either way but find it food for thought.
If it were as easy to prevent people from driving as it is to prevent them from flying, i wouldn’t want to imprison drink drivers, either. I absolutely would prevent them from driving, though.
It would only apply to folks who have been convicted of such a crime launching a company to promote sober flying and encourage drivers to seek help BEFORE they break the law. That is only a tiny minority of such drivers.
Her point was that if it was possible to prevent convicted drunks from operating cars there would be no rationale to imprison them.
I can totally see that in 50 years. The car knows how to recognize who you are and if you’re not on the car’s authorized list of drivers, it refuses to go. Solve the drunk repeat offender problem and the auto theft problem all at once. And the fugitive from the law problem.