Silencer trial ends in guilty verdicts

I got tons of emails while this trial was going on over the last several days. But, honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to understand the thing. Apparently, a couple of guys tried to sell some silencers that didn’t work to the government who didn’t order them. See? But, finally, Stars & Stripes reports that the trial ended in guilty verdicts for the fellows who couldn’t make silencers that work, and that I can understand;

Lee M. Hall, a civilian Navy intelligence official at the Pentagon, and Mark S. Landersman, the mechanic, were convicted of conspiring to build 349 untraceable silencers — without a firearms license — and shipping them across state lines for a sensitive mission that was never fully explained in court.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who delivered the verdicts after bench trials in Alexandria, Virginia, said she was unconvinced by defense attorneys’ assertions that the silencers were needed for a clandestine purpose and were necessarily obtained outside of normal channels.

“I do not accept the argument that because this might have been covert, that somehow that excuses the participants from playing by the rules,” she said.

Somehow, there was 1.6 million bucks involved that was somehow owed to these guys, but the government denies that they ordered the things…and oh, did I mention that the silencers weren’t silencing?

Defense attorneys said the price was reasonable because Mark Landersman had spent years working on the design. They also hinted that the silencers’ poor performance was exactly why the Navy ordered them — suggesting obliquely that they were destined to end up in the hands of foreign guerrillas who may or may not have been friends of the United States.

Sorting out the truth of the case has been made even more challenging because of the destruction of potential evidence.

Navy security officers testified that they incinerated documents last year that had been seized from the offices of Hall and David Landersman — three days after The Washington Post published a front-page article about the unfolding investigation. Defense attorneys also accused the Navy of destroying a secret stash of automatic weapons that the silencers were designed to fit.

See, that’s why I couldn’t bring myself to pay attention to the story. I mean, I could design and build twice that many silencers that don’t work for half of that price. I’ll even pretend to work on the design for years, if that’s all it takes. Anyway, someone is going to jail, but probably not enough people by the sounds of it.

Category: Dumbass Bullshit