TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Dec 30, 2020

The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today upheld the decision of a three judge panel to give former Pilot Company president Mark Hazelwood a new trial, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. The panel overturned the convictions of Hazelwood and two subordinates in October, ruling that U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier was wrong to allow prosecutors at the 2018 trial to play secret recordings of Hazelwood making racist comments. The one-page order offered no explanation but rejected a request by federal prosecutors to reconsider the decision. Prosecutors must now decide if they can reconstruct the case in which many witnesses were made up of reluctant former Pilot employees who received sentencing breaks in return for their testimony.