CONCEPTION FIRE - NTSB REPORT & NEW USCG RULES
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Everything I see is from Oct 2022...More info please?
Yesterday: Captain of wrecked scuba boat can’t duck criminal charges
The lede reads
So, captain's legal team had made a motion to dismiss, which was rejected yesterday. I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that this would have been a long shot. Most of the rest of this article is color on the events of 2019, with which we're all quite familiar by now.
The lede reads
Courthouse News:
So, captain's legal team had made a motion to dismiss, which was rejected yesterday. I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that this would have been a long shot. Most of the rest of this article is color on the events of 2019, with which we're all quite familiar by now.
nolatom
Contributor
Years after fire engulfed scuba dive boat killing 34 people, captain's trial begins
Federal prosecutors are seeking justice for 34 people killed in a fire aboard a scuba dive boat called the Conception in 2019
BySTEFANIE DAZIO Associated Press
October 24, 2023, 2:01 AM
FILE - National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) shows the wreckage of the dive boat...Show more
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES -- By the time the scuba dive boat sank off the Southern California coast after catching fire, 34 people had been killed in the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history.
The Labor Day tragedy in 2019 spurred changes to maritime regulations, congressional reform and civil lawsuits. Now four years later, a federal trial for the Conception's captain, Jerry Boylan, is set to begin Tuesday with jury selection in Los Angeles.
It's been a long, frustrating wait for the families of those who perished. They say a judge's ruling that their loved ones should not be called “victims” at trial has only added to their pain.
“The past four years have been like living in a nightmare that you don’t wake up from,” said Kathleen McIlvain, whose 44-year-old son Charles was killed.
The 75-foot (23-meter) boat was anchored off the Channel Islands, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Santa Barbara, on Sept. 2, 2019, when it caught fire before dawn on the last day of a three-day excursion, sinking less than 100 feet (30 meters) from shore.
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The National Transportation Safety Board blamed Boylan for the tragedy, saying his failure to post a roving night watchman allowed the fire to quickly spread undetected, trapping the 33 passengers and one crew member below.
Those on board included a new deckhand who’d landed her dream job and an environmental scientist who did research in Antarctica, along with a globe-trotting couple, a Singaporean data scientist, three sisters, their father and his wife.
U.S. District Judge George Wu on Oct. 12 granted Boylan's request to bar most if not all references to “victims” — which the captain's attorneys say is a prejudicial term that jeopardizes his right to a fair trial. It's the latest setback for the prosecution.
A grand jury in 2020 initially indicted Boylan on 34 counts of a pre-Civil War statute colloquially known as “seaman’s manslaughter” that was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters. Each count carries up to 10 years in prison in a conviction, for a total of 340 years.
Defense lawyers sought to dismiss those charges, arguing the deaths were the result of a single incident and not separate crimes. Prosecutors got a superseding indictment charging Boylan with only one count.
Does this mean that the maximum sentence he could get will be 10 years?
nolatom
Contributor
It looks that way, according to the ABCnews article below, it's misconduct of a ship's officer, which is a new charge. The prosecution had to give up on using the old Seaman's Manslaughter Act, which didn't pass muster with the judge, since it did not allege gross negligence as opposed to "simple" negligence. Article here:
Years after fire engulfed scuba dive boat killing 34 people, captain's trial begins
Federal prosecutors are seeking justice for 34 people killed in a fire aboard a scuba dive boat called the Conception in 2019
abcnews.go.com
KevinNM
Contributor
I’m not quite seeing how openly and deliberately violating the law that requires a night watch, and violating it for decades, isn’t gross negligence. But not a lawyer…
nolatom
Contributor
Agree. But the charge in the first go-round was under the rather ancient Seaman's Manslaughter Act, which doesn't require proof of gross negligence, just "ordinary" negligence, which traditionally doesn't amount to a crime.
So they dismissed and re-filed under "criminal misconduct of a ship's officer" which is a different federal statute, and would be a crime. Opening statements are just happening now:
Conception boat fire trial: Jury chosen; opening statements to begin
The 2019 Conception dive boat fire is considered the worst maritime disaster in modern California history.
Personally, I don't see how you could *not* have a roving watchstander during those wee hours, especially since the boat's Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection, specifically requires one. But they hadn't done so for who knows how long, they "normalized deviance".
I've been on an overnight dive boat (but aluminum, not fiberglass)) often as a diver, sleeping down in that same below-decks type of "dungeon". And on a couple of occasions was Second Captain or Mate--So, I had the night watch. And there was no question that I had to be awake and making occasional rounds, that same language on the COI.
But I was on the main deck, and the wheelhouse. a couple of steps higher. So i could see most of that deck just by looking around, but I did make rounds, it helped keep me awake. I like to think I'd have noticed smoke pretty quickly. But the Conception had all crew sleeping one deck above that, in/near the wheelhouse so there was no one anywhere on that whole main deck after about 0200 (when the cook went to bed) to see that fire start, and notice it in time to fight it while it was small, and wake up everybody.
So whether it started in a Lithium battery charge station (as most folks thought), or from a wastebasket fire (the latest forensics say), it had a good half-hour or longer head start, by which time the main deck cabin was engulfed in flames. Having seen photos of that upper deck with flames all underneath it,
I don't quite get the charges, or argument, that the Captain was first one "off the boat", and that he didn't use the fire-axe or other firefighting equipment. By the time they were awakened by the fire lapping up around their own deck, I don't see how they could have fought it, it was too far advanced. And they jumped overboard not because they were cowards, but because there wasn't any other way off the boat with those flames right below them and lapping upward, so and they had to jump clear of it and into the water. Then they tried to climb back on near the stern to help if they could, but the whole cabin and access way to the sleeping quarters down below, was blocked by huge flames.
Enough from me. It's just a sad story, not evil men, but just that complacency of no watchstander awake.
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