An
appellate court in Brazil next week will review the conviction of two
Long Island pilots for their role in a 2006 midair collision that killed
154 people. The appellate court ruling will come 17 months after the
pilots of a Ronkonkoma-based ExcelAire business jet were convicted of
one count and exonerated on five other counts and sentenced to community
service.
Two
American pilots of a business jet will be retried for their role in a
2006 airline crash that killed 154 people on an airliner in Brazil, the
federal prosecutor's office said Tuesday.
Pilots Joseph Lepore of
Bay Shore, New York, and Jan Paladino of Westhampton Beach, New York,
will be retried in absentia Monday, a statement released by the
prosecutor's office said.
The two were allowed to leave Brazil
two months after the crash, but were convicted last year and sentenced
to 52 months in prison. The sentence was commuted to community service
in the United States.
The retrial was ordered after prosecutors
appealed the sentence and asked that it be increased to 69 months in
prison, without the possibility of it being replaced by community
service.
"The
sentence should be increased because despite being professionals the
defendants kept the aircraft's anti-collision system turned off for
almost one hour, thus causing the accident," the statement quotes
prosecutor Osnir Belice as saying.
The two pilots have insisted
anti-collision system and transponder on the business jet they were
flying were never turned off. They deny any wrongdoing.
The
Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet collided with a Boeing 737 operated by
Gol Lineas Aereas Intelligentes SA. The smaller plane, owned by
Ronkonkoma, New York-based ExcelAire Service Inc., landed safely while
the larger jet crashed into the jungle, killing all aboard.
It
was Brazil's worst air disaster until a jet ran off a runway less than a
year later in Sao Paulo and burst into flames, killing 199 people.
Lepore
and Paladino faced charges in Brazil of negligence and endangering air
traffic safety for allegedly flying at the wrong altitude and failing to
turn on the aircraft's anti-collision system. The judge convicted them
of impeding the safe navigation of an airplane.
Theo Dias, a Brazilian lawyer for the American pilots, has appealed last year's sentence.
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