Posted on 11/12/2018 5:11:01 PM PST by Kaslin
This story is a bit down in the weeds, I’ll admit, but it has a bit of an interesting legal twist to it. Back in July, a duck boat sank on Table Rock Lake in Missouri, killing seventeen people, including nine members of a single family. It was a tragedy that made national headlines, but now the matter is making its way through the courts and an obscure law from the 1800s may put the captain of the boat in prison for a very long time. As the Washington Post reported this week, Captain Kenneth Scott McKee is looking at seventeen charges under what’s known as the “Seaman’s Manslaughter Statue” and could get ten years in prison for each one.
The statute that McKee was charged under is known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and dates back to the era when steamboat disasters were commonplace, killing hundreds of people in fires and boiler explosions. In 1838, Congress passed legislation stating that captains and crew could be held criminally liable if anyone on board died as a result of their misconduct, negligence, or attention to their duties.
“Until recently, prosecutions under the Seaman’s Manslaughter Statute were a rare event,” Jeanne Grasso, a partner at Blank Rome LLP who specializes in maritime law, wrote in a 2005 article in Benedict’s Maritime Bulletin. From 1848 to 1990, she wrote, there had been only eight major prosecutions under the law. But between 1998 and 2005, the statute was used to prosecute boat captains and crew members in seven major cases.
At first glance, this may sound like a justifiable end to the story. The details of the sinking certainly made it sound as if the captain and crew were culpable. They set sail when terrible weather was clearly in the forecast, with high winds and lightning expected. When the storm struck, the captain failed to speed up and hasten toward shore to get his passengers out of it. When an alarm sounded, indicating that the ship was taking on water, the crew failed to direct them to put on life jackets. There was plenty of fault to be assigned, so why not charge the captain?
While I agree that he’s liable in at least some regards and bears the responsibility for the losses, this was still technically an accident. And in such a case the government generally has to prove negligence. But which kind? Normally, in order to convict someone of a crime equivalent to manslaughter and lock them up, the prosecutors must prove gross negligence. (That’s “a lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people’s rights to safety.”) But because of this ancient law and the fact that it happened on a ship, the state only has to prove simple negligence. (That would be, “an injury that results from failing to take precautions that differs from negligence that is willful and deliberate.”)
Simply put, and as has already been pointed out by some legal scholars, you can be sent to prison for working on a ship and doing something which would probably only result in a fine if you did the same thing working on a train or a bus. Was the captain in this case grossly negligent? Failing to guess the weather correctly isn’t very easy to pin on him as it was impossible to say precisely how bad the storm would be until it arrived. His failure to speed up when it hit was a poor judgment call to be sure, but did it rise to the level of a reckless disregard for the lives of his passengers and crew? The failure to hand out the life jackets might qualify, but it’s a fine line.
The captain’s attorney has said that he will plead not guilty and fight this in court. But it sounds like unequal treatment under the law if he’s being held to a standard which only applies to sailing vessels and not ground or air transportation. That’s not to say he shouldn’t pay a price for the results of that terrible trip, but should he do more time than someone who murders a person with a gun over an accident? And should such a finding be based on such an archaic law? Stay tuned. We likely won’t know the answer until next year.
Every captain, engineer, pilot, or other person employed on any steamboat or vessel, by whose misconduct, negligence, or inattention to his duties on such vessel the life of any person is destroyed, and every owner, charterer, inspector, or other public officer, through whose fraud, neglect, connivance, misconduct, or violation of law the life of any person is destroyed, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
When the owner or charterer of any steamboat or vessel is a corporation, any executive officer of such corporation, for the time being actually charged with the control and management of the operation, equipment, or navigation of such steamboat or vessel, who has knowingly and willfully caused or allowed such fraud, neglect, connivance, misconduct, or violation of law, by which the life of any person is destroyed, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Were charges brought against the company? According to your post all are liable.
I’m sure the company had a bean counter that considered the costs/risks. They went with their pocketbook.
Yep. I think you’re right. Probably why the count is 17. It was a lot higher on the Titanic.
They gotta keep that 99% conviction rate both to keep their jobs, and also later to get a high flying criminal defense career.
How do they get 99% conviction rates? By ‘throwing the book’ at the accused and charging people with every conceivable crime related to the charge no matter how implausible a conviction on some of them might be... and sometimes threatening to charge a spouse or child too. Then, “kindly” offering a plea bargain. When you are facing a 15 count indictment plus bankruptcy in legal fees to defend yourself, the prospect of pleading guilty to 1 lesser charge and a short jail sentence looks attractive.
Our justice system has gone haywire. But that’s how they do it. If everyone refused to take a plea, the criminal justice system would grind to a halt. There are not enough courtrooms and prosecutors and judges to handle all the indictments that are handed out. Prosecutors absolutely depend on plea bargains to get through their workload, so they come down with a stack of books on everyone in the attempt to blackmail them into a plea. It’s not justice at all.
I was visiting near a public beach on Sandy Hook, NJ. and went for a walk on it. The beach was full of “city” folk. Hispanics mostly. Thousands of them. Could they swim? No, they were all wading out into the surf on sandbars that were surrounded by deep channels. When I got there, divers were pulling a very blue and dead “swimmer” on to the beach. The rest of the “swimmers” reminded me a chickens more interested in the feed trough than the busy chopping block.
If you can’t swim, don’t play in the water.
17 people died ergo that many counts. Then who else is culpable? Was the captain following orders like a getaway car driver while the bosses killed all in the bank and stole the money? I’d like to know. All in, all swing. There’s more than just a dumbass boat driver in this B S. Bankruptcy and running should be criminal.
I used to go hang gliding at a place called Dog Mountain near Morton, WA. It was a terrific place which was soarable about 2/3rds of the time, meaning you could fly around for hours on end. Typically the wind was much to strong for paragliders, so we didn’t have to worry about colliding with the jelly fish of the skies with our much faster and more maneuverable hang gliders.
There was a guy who sold tandem hang glider flights at the state fair. And he and his partner had people scheduled for rides every half hour. They were both drinkers and pot smokers. I wouldn’t get into a car that was being driven by either of them even if they looked sober.
Dog Mountain is considered a cliff launch. So these people were lined up to jump off a cliff with these two guys. And they would launch into conditions with passengers that most of us would not ever consider launching in.
How there were no fatalities that resulted from that operation I will never understand, and I am someone who took a lot more risks in my younger years than I ever should have. God must have taken pity on them and me. But how would you ever explain jumping off a cliff with a trusting kid into a howling squall?
The duck boat is capable of traveling on land or water. If they had accidentally flipped the boat on the road and killed the same number of people, would the captain be facing 170 years in prison?
This looks to be another example of prosecutor overreach.
It is a federal case, and there is plenty of Missouri and federal case law that holds that man made lakes like Table Rock are not navigable waterways subject to admiralty jurisdiction. But U.S. Attorneys don’t let facts and law get in the way of a good prosecution.
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