From the following blog:
http://pft2009.blogspot.com/Homeland Insecurity Inconsistencies
In-flight confrontations can lead to terrorism charges...
Highlights:
Tamera Jo Freeman was on a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver in 2007 when her two children began to quarrel over the window shade and then spilled a Bloody Mary into her lap. She spanked each of them on the thigh with three swats.A flight attendant confronted Freeman, who responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor. The incident aboard the Frontier flight ultimately led to Freeman's arrest and conviction for a federal felony defined as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act, the controversial federal law enacted after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
"I had no idea I was breaking the law," said Freeman, 40, who spent three months in jail before pleading guilty. The costs of a conviction can be enormous. In Tamera Freeman's case, it cost her custody of her children.
The confrontation on the Frontier Airlines flight to Denver was particularly harsh, recalled Amy Fleming, the flight attendant who told Freeman to stop spanking her children. In a recent interview, Fleming called Freeman the most unruly passenger she had seen in 11 years on the job."
Absolutely she deserved a felony conviction," she said.
But at least one passenger, John Carlson, a defense attorney who was seated near Freeman, said there was no threat. "There was a nasty, loud exchange," Carlson said. Then Freeman "capitulated and offered no resistance. My sympathy shifted to her."
Last summer, a Boston man who took off his clothes and attempted to open an emergency exit during a flight to Los Angeles was not charged with a crime, even though the plane was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Oklahoma City.
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