Opening statements conclude in trial of captain in deadly dive boat fire
LOS ANGELES — Opening statements concluded Wednesday in the trial of the captain of a scuba dive boat that caught fire in 2019, killing 34 people on board, with prosecutors and defense attorneys making their conflicting cases for who was truly responsible for the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history.
Captain Jerry Boylan is charged with one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer, a pre-Civil War statute colloquially known as "seaman's manslaughter" that was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters. He faces 10 years behind bars if convicted.
He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
Boylan's federal public defender argued it was the boat's owner, Glen Fritzler — not the captain — who was responsible for training the crew and creating an environment where no captain who worked for him posted a roving watch. Prosecutor Matthew O'Brien said Boylan was the one responsible for training the crew and posting a roving watch.
Fritzler's attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Glen and Dana Fritzler have owned Truth Aquatics, Inc., the company that operated the Conception and two other scuba dive boats, for more than four decades. The Fritzlers have not commented on the tragedy besides an interview with Santa Barbara local TV station KEYT shortly after the fire.
"We're all so saddened," Glen Fritzler told the TV station's reporter at the time.
Three days after the inferno, Truth Aquatics filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles under a pre-Civil War provision of maritime law that allows it to limit its liability to the remains of the boat, which was a total loss. The time-tested legal maneuver has been successfully employed by the owners of the Titanic and other vessels, and requires the Fritzlers to show they were not at fault.
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.
U.S. District Court Judge George Wu, as well as federal prosecutors and Boylan's public defenders, had asked potential jurors about their experiences with fires. Boylan's team also questioned the prospective jurors what they feeling about the idea behind the phrase "the captain goes down with the ship."
The 75-foot (23-meter) boat was anchored off the Channel Islands, 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Santa Barbara, on Sept. 2, 2019, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day excursion, sinking less than 100 feet (30 meters) from shore.
Boylan and four crew members sleeping in the upper deck told investigators they tried to save the others but ultimately had to jump overboard to survive. Boylan made a mayday call before abandoning ship.
Those on board included a new deckhand who had 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.
Some of the dead were wearing shoes, prompting investigators to believe they were awake and trying to escape. Both exits from the below-deck bunkroom were blocked by flames. While coroner's reports list smoke inhalation as the cause of death, what exactly started the fire remains unknown. An official cause remains undetermined.
The inferno spurred changes to maritime regulations, congressional reform and civil lawsuits.
The NTSB faulted the Coast Guard for not enforcing the roving watchman requirement and recommended it develop a program to ensure boats with overnight passengers have a watchman.
Victims' families have sued the Coast Guard in one of several ongoing civil suits.
At the time of the fire, no owner, operator or charterer had been cited or fined for failure to post a roving patrol since 1991, Coast Guard records showed.
The Coast Guard has since enacted new, congressionally mandated regulations regarding fire detection systems, extinguishers and escape routes, though it has yet to implement others.