Skip to footer

Florida man who landed gyrocopter on Capitol grounds rejects two plea deals

Douglas Hughes, a former mail carrier from Ruskin, Fla., was arrested on April 15 after piloting the craft from Pennsylvania and landing on the west lawn of the Capitol.

|
Carlos Barria/Reuters
Douglas Hughes talks to reporters outside of a courthouse in Washington, June 22, 2015. Mr. Hughes, a Florida man who flew a gyrocopter onto the US Capitol grounds, has rejected two plea deals and said on Wednesday his trial would be a forum on the need for campaign finance reform.
  • By Ian Simpson Reuters

| Washington

A Florida man who flew a gyrocopter onto the U.S. Capitol grounds has rejected two plea deals and said on Wednesday his trial would be a forum on the need for campaign finance reform.

Douglas Hughes, a former mail carrier from Ruskin, Fla., said he expected two trials from his illegal flight – one in U.S. District Court and a second in public opinion as he fights lobbyists' influence in the U.S. capital.

"People, if they want to have a circus, I'm going to bring an elephant," Hughes told reporters outside U.S. District court.

He was arrested on April 15 after piloting the craft from Pennsylvania and landing on the west lawn of the Capitol. He was carrying a letter for each of the 535 members of Congress.

The stunt involving the small unauthorized aircraft was among the most high-profile of recent security lapses in Washington.

Hughes' lawyer, assistant federal public defender Tony Miles, said during a status hearing before District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that Hughes had rejected a formal plea offer that would have put him in prison for 10 to 16 months. An informal second offer of a 10-month sentence expired on Wednesday.

Kollar-Kotelly set a tentative trial date of Sept. 8.

Hughes told reporters he was fired from the U.S. Postal Service on July 4. He is applying for food stamps and because of the trial has no job prospects, he said.

He has a 12-year-old child at home and his wife, an immigrant from Belarus, does not work, he said.

Hughes is seeking approval from Kollar-Kotelly to add Washington attorney Mark Goldstone to his defense team. Goldstone, an expert in civil disobedience cases, would be paid for by unnamed Hughes sympathizers, Miles said in a court filing.

Hughes faces six charges, including violating the registration requirements for an aircraft and national defense airspace. Aircraft are banned from flying in the area of the Capitol and White House without permission.

A gyrocopter resembles a helicopter but has an unpowered rotor and separate propeller.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Florida man who landed gyrocopter on Capitol grounds rejects two plea deals
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0722/Florida-man-who-landed-gyrocopter-on-Capitol-grounds-rejects-two-plea-deals
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe