Judge Allows Portions of Flight 93 Audio at Trial
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The dramatic final moments of United Airlines Flight 93 that were captured on a cockpit voice recorder can be played for a jury later this month at the first trial to result from lawsuits filed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a judge ruled today.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ruled that jurors can’t listen to the entire tape but can hear portions of it that the hijacked passengers may have heard.
The relevant portions include a segment in which the voices of one or two of the apparent hijackers announce to passengers that they have a bomb on board.
He also said jurors could hear a 4-minute-long stretch of the sounds of passengers trying to force their way into the cockpit and retake the airplane.
The cockpit voice recording has never been publicly released, though it was played at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in Virginia.
