JM69:
In order to figure out the difficult task by the judiciary system to PROVE that someone had criminal intend ...
In the case of criminal intent, all that we are saying is useless and can only help the offender get away with it (an accepted flaw in criminal systems, hopefully a rare occurrence) . the problem is HOW to judge your intent.
(or criminal neglicency),
This is one of the issues : if you are slightly familiar with criminal systems, you are then aware that 'forgetting' or 'omitting' a checklist item can be considered a criminal negligence.
Now...all those who have never omitted a checklist items raise their hands...fortunately there are redundancies in the system so that 99.99% of the time it has none or minimal consequences.
A criminal case has to decide as well on what the intentions of the person were...and if you are slightly familiar you know, it is a very difficult call to make. Unless you have all the procedural rights of our system (and even then) there is a fair random chance that your intentions may be judged incorrectly...this is not black and white.
all information gathered about the case is of help.
Of course not! (in a criminal sense, that is totally inconstitutional) It does not work that way for a murderer, why should it for aviation professionals? Why should we have fewer rights than a terrorist?
A criminal shooting someone can be convicted with the help of a video recording coming from a traffic camera, shopping mall cctv, nearby bank security, nearby witness with a video camera (or without one), etc.
Those recordings are not "authorized by a judge" to be used against the criminal in question, but they are available nonetheless.
...but they are either
public or
announced recordings
, just go through some court cases where such recordings are used, you will find it is often indeed a gray area...
CVR and DFR existence is known by pilots.
Therefore, in order to elliminate the gray area, go ahead and legislate so. (I said this is ony theoretical anyway cos implementing that law should not be too difficult, though I dont know what pilots unions would think of it). I am in any case not saying the recordings should not be used in a criminal case, just they should be doing their own analysis independent from that of the Investigation Board.
If they want to commit (remember, criminal activities must be "voluntary" to a high degree)
Absolutely not, you could commit
involuntary negligence and go to jail...
As long as pilots (or other crew with access to the cockpit) don't do anything clearly criminal, they are safe.
An ideal world could be like that, but it doesn't work that way:
JM69, accept it: the criminal system has flaws (which are exhacerbated when the media gets deeply and wrongly involved as in the JK case), and airplanes are operated and maintained by humans who are also not flawless (even if they get it right 99.9999% of the time).
This is not substantially different from other professions, though.
It is in that an arquitect has all the time in the world (or a lot more than crews, for sure) to make his decisions... flight crew do not. And trust me, an architect and specially a lawyer would work in a very different way if we put a recorder next to him all the time he is working...
Remember, making a mistake can be your responsability to others, but it is not criminal.
Again you are wrong in this. Please read Spain's Penal and Procedural Air Navigation Law.
Don't get me wrong, we want everyone with a criminal intent connected to an aircraft accident to be found guilty.
We also want to be able to do our professional jobs with diligence and in the knowledge our rights as citizens are unaffected. Most of the professional systems (and people) I know outside of aviation are more flawed than aviation, so we should at least have the same rights. Otherwise the referred diligence will be disincentivated and end up dissapearing...that is the VERY REAL risk we are running into and that we are already observing in other systems like health services. Don't ask me how I know...