The JetBlue pilot charged with flying while drunk last year is already seeing a physician and taking anxiety meds, his lawyer said Tuesday.
“It would be rare to have a client who wasn’t suffering from anxiety when he faces up to 15 years in prison,” Neal Comer said of pilot Dennis Thomas Murphy Jr.
The claim came during a Brooklyn federal court debate on a government bid to require that Murphy, 44, drink no alcohol as a condition of his release.
Fighting it, Comer claimed Murphy’s arrest for blowing a .111 — nearly triple the FAA limit for pilots — was a “one-off event that happened more than a year ago.”
Comer said he’s “not an alcoholic now. If he wants a glass of wine once in a while, shouldn’t he be able to?”
In response, the government agreed to requiring Murphy just not to drink excessively subject to random Breathalyzer testing.




