"Culture" is completely ephemeral and having a court of law determine that the CEO "caused" some change in culture which then caused criminal behavior is ridiculous. This obviously can not be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt".
>I mean parents are liable for their children
Parents do not take on the crimes of their children. They are criminally liable for not overseeing their children's action and/or for not preventing their actions, which is something totally different.
The specific case here about criminally negligent software design errors almost certainly never came up to the CEO. If there is evidence otherwise and the CEO was aware of the problem and decided that the risks were acceptable then he obviously should go to jail. This was not the case here as far as I am aware.
Knowing of the issue is the important thing here. If you want another case you can look at the Diesel Gate Scandal at VW, it is German law, but the single most important question is always "who knew", because if the person did not know and had no reason to want to know he HAS to be innocent, regardless whether it is the CEO or anyone else.
He or she is responsible for the culture and governing within the company. So either way they are involved either by knowing and ignoring or by setting the precedent for this to go ahead without their knowledge. The punishment for those might differ but it's not a free pass.
It’s the CEO’s job to make sure these things “come up” to him. If he didn’t know about an engineering problem that got people killed then he is negligent and still should go to prison.
I don’t get all this simping for CEOs. CEOs don’t need us to defend them on HN. Trust me, they are doing fine without passioned arguments in support of them.
Why does the cost of investigation have to be paid by society?
It is not completely different. The CEOs should be liable for not properly overseeing their company and for not preventing the illegal actions of the company they're in charge of.
For example: if someone breaks into a bank, do you always fire the CEO?
Then: if an employee of the bank breaks into a bank, now do you always fire the CEO?
If a Boeing engineer has a breakdown and robs a 7-11, the C suite of Boeing is not responsible for that.
If the Boeing engineer murders people in their course of duty because of the incentive structure set up by the C suite then they are responsible for that. How do you prove that? The same way how you prove anything. Lots of discovery which reveals concrete evidence of the C suite setting up and maintaining said incentive structure and then the prosecutorial team describing the connection to a jurry of their peers.
It is the difference between little Jimmy deciding to rob a 7-11 because they are dumb as a rock, vs doing the same because they grown up in an organised crime family.
