Jury Deadlocks on Smoker Accused of Disrupting Flight

A mistrial was declared Friday in federal court proceedings against a Studio City hairdresser accused of cursing at and manhandling an airline stewardess who ordered him to put out his cigarette on a cross-country flight.

After a day of deliberations, jurors said they were hopelessly split 7 to 5 in favor of convicting James J. Tabacca, 37, on a charge of interfering with the duties of a flight crew.

After dismissing the jury, U. S. District Judge David W. Williams scheduled a hearing for Thursday, when prosecutors will announce whether they will seek a new trial.

Tabacca lost his temper when smoking was unexpectedly banned on a TWA flight from Boston to Los Angeles on Dec. 30, 1987. At the time, federal law required airlines to ban smoking on individual flights when requests for nonsmoking seats reached a certain level.

As a result, a last-minute surge of nonsmokers often resulted in flights being declared nonsmoking, sometimes after takeoff.

Since February, 1990, Congress has banned smoking on all domestic flights of six hours or less--effectively eliminating smoking on airliners throughout the country.

Tabacca, a hairdresser for a mortician, was convicted in federal court in September, 1988, and sentenced to 15 days in jail, but an appeals court reversed the decision. The U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted Tabacca a second trial on the ground that the trial judge improperly allowed a verdict to be reached by 11 jurors after one was unable to return to court during deliberations.

At the retrial this week, Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael R. Davis said that Tabacca was “angry and frustrated and let everyone around him know about it” when told that smoking would not be allowed on the flight of more than five hours.

Flight attendant Pam Martinez testified that Tabacca became hysterical, swearing at her and twisting her arm after she ordered him to douse his cigarette. She told jurors that she was “frightened and immobilized” by the incident and was forced to take a leave of absence from her job because she was too upset to work.

Deputy Federal Public Defender Gerald Salseda acknowledged that Tabacca was “loud and obnoxious” but insisted that Tabacca had never touched the stewardess. He argued that Martinez concocted the assault story to cover up her inability to control passengers’ behavior.

Several witnesses described the crowded flight as erupting into chaos as smokers protested the ban on lighting up.

The charge against Tabacca carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.