BREAKING Dive boat fire: Judge tosses manslaughter charge in disaster that killed 34 off Ventura County coast
"Had the Coast Guard properly inspected Conception, it never would have been certified, never set sail, and these 34 victims would not have lost their lives," attorney Jeffrey Goodman said in a statement.A Los Angeles federal judge threw out an indictment Friday charging a dive boat captain with manslaughter in the deaths of 34 people in a 2019 fire aboard a vessel anchored off the Southern California coast.
But the indictment failed to specify that Boylan acted with gross negligence, which U.S. District Judge George Wu said was a required element to prove the crime of seaman's manslaughter and must be listed in the indictment. Surviving crew members said the blaze prevented them from trying to reach those trapped in the bunk room. Flames blocked a stairwell and a small hatch that were the only exits from below deck, officials said. All 34 perished from smoke inhalation.Boylan originally was indicted on 34 counts of seaman's manslaughter with each carrying a possible prison term of 10 years if he was convicted.
Federal prosecutors countered that under the pre-Civil War statute, designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters, they only needed to show Boylan acted with simple negligence, a unique standard for a felony. Robert Weisberg, a criminal law professor at Stanford University, blamed Congress in part for writing the law in an "ad hoc and inconsistent" manner.
Simple negligence would be if someone caused harm without ever considering the risks they took. It would be gross negligence if they considered the possible consequences but acted anyway. Gross negligence often incorporates an element of recklessness.
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