Stowaway looks to jettison conviction for sneaking onto Paris-bound plane

Dali claims a lower court judge erroneously withheld trial evidence of her delusions that she was being poisoned when she boarded the flight.MANHATTAN (CN) — A woman asked a Second Circuit panel on Wednesday to keep aloft her appeal after she was convicted of sneaking onto a 2025 Delta flight from New York to Paris and hiding in the lavatory.Svetlana Dali has said she did it because she believed she was being poisoned by the United States government, a delusion she claims was erroneously withheld from her trial jury, leading to her guilty verdict.U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Park, a Donald Trump appointee, remarked Wednesday her argument sounds “kind of like an insanity defense.” Dali’s attorney insisted it’s anything but.“It’s certainly different,” said Siobhan Atkins, Dali’s public defender. “An insanity defense would be arguing, ‘I committed this crime, I knew what I was doing was unlawful, but I should be excused from committing the crime because of mental illness.’”In this case, Atkins said Dali’s delusions could have explained behavior prosecutors painted as intentionally sneaky, like hiding in the plane’s bathroom. That’s different from a mental health defense, Atkins said, which Dali declined to pursue at her federal trial in Brooklyn last year.At trial, Dali, a permanent U.S. resident from Russia, was found guilty of one count of knowingly and intentionally stowing away on an airplane after she snuck onto the full flight in 2024 without a boarding pass or passport.She hid in the bathroom for almost the entire red-eye trek from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport. Throughout the flight, attendants checked in on Dali, who said she was vomiting, and offered her water and ginger ale, according to testimony.Dali was ousted when a flight attendant insisted she take a seat during a turbulent landing, revealing she didn’t have one.She was sentenced to time served. But Dali supposedly struck again earlier this year after she was arrested in February for sneaking onto another flight, this time to Milan. A source familiar with the matter told Courthouse News Dali is believed to still be in Italy.Her legal team declined to comment on her latest arrest. It is unclear if she has been charged.Prosecutors say Dali had every opportunity to present evidence of her delusions at her trial for the 2024 incident, but she lost her chance when she waived the insanity defense.“That was a strategic decision on counsel’s part, and it was one that avoided the requirements of the [Insanity Defense Reform Act], it avoided this court’s scrutiny — the precedent that requires scrutiny of mental health evidence that’s offered to negate intent,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Theodora told the court Wednesday.Park pushed back, noting Dali seemed to only want to admit her own personal statements that she believed she was being poisoned, not necessarily mental health evidence.“Is it a wording question?” asked the judge. “Believed she was being poisoned versus delusional?”Theodora said it wasn’t, and that the lower court had every right to reject those arguments since Dali said she wasn’t going to make them. And even if this was an error, Theodora added it was a harmless one given the “overwhelming” evidence against Dali presented at trial.“She got up there and testified to basically every element of this crime,” she said.Dali testified during her brief trial on May 21, 2025, when she told jurors through a Russian translator she “just walked onto the airplane.” Jurors took less than an hour to convict her the following day.Joining Park on the bench was Senior U.S. Circuit Judge John Walker, a George H. W. Bush appointee, and U.S. District Judge Philip Halpern, a Donald Trump appointee in the Southern District of New York. The trio didn’t immediately rule following Wednesday’s hearing.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads