> The second crash was murder.

No civilised justice system in the world is getting to murder from these facts.

Manslaughter via negligence if you're feeling really lucky

Depends on if it could be shown that the decision to not ground was motivated by a desire for profit or not.

Still not murder unless they intended for the deaths to occur.

> The felony murder rule is a rule that allows a defendant to be charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurs during a dangerous felony, even if the defendant is not the killer.

Is whatever Boeing did a "dangerous felony"? Wikipedia suggests not every crime qualifies:

>To avoid the need for reliance upon common law interpretations of what felony conduct merges with murder, and what offenses do and do not qualify for felony murder, many U.S. jurisdictions explicitly list what offenses qualify in a felony murder statute. Federal law specifies additional crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and carjacking.

Knowingly placing thousands of lives at risk, including possible state actors - risking international relationships, whilst also risking damages to critical infrastructure, such as airports, certainly would seem to qualify as a dangerous felony.

The legal system doesn't operate on "seem".

No, but anybody commenting on legalities outside the court room should be using "seem", as what they're saying is not definitive. Especially if they've got any legal background.

If they can do it to Trump, they can do it to Boeing.

Trump wasn't prosecuted for felony murder, he was prosecuted for a misdemeanor which was upgraded to a felony because it was used to violate campaign finance laws.

...which was done on a novel legal theory (like people are alluding to in this thread). I realize the analogy triggers some of you but it's not a bad one.

There are different degrees of murder. First degree requires you to plan in advance kill someone (either particular person or a specific group). Second degree murder doesn't require the plan to kill, and so negligence for financial gain COULD be second degree murder depending on the details. (Boeing knew or should have known that their mistakes could lead to death and so mitigated this)

Note that US states are not consistent on what is second degree murder. I cannot find a federal definition (I'm not a lawyer - this should be seen as me not knowing the right search terms). There are many other countries with their own definitions of murder which are all slightly different.

> No civilised justice system in the world is getting to murder from these facts.

Felony murder statutes disagree.