LOS ANGELES (CN) — The captain of a recreational scuba-diving boat that burned down during an overnight trip off the coast of California was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for seaman's manslaughter.
The disaster killed all 33 passengers, as well as crewmember trapped below deck.
U.S. District Judge George Wu, a George W. Bush appointee, said it was one of the most difficult sentences he ever has had to determine. The judge declined the prosecution's request to send 70-year-old captain Jerry Boylan to prison for 10 years.
Eighteen relatives of the people who died on the fatal 2019 Labor Day trip spoke at the almost four-hour hearing in downtown Los Angeles. Many in tears, they described how grief has upended their lives.
Many of those who addressed the court also expressed anger at what they said was Boylan's unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions. Almost all asked the judge to sentence Boylan to the maximum sentence allowed by the law.
"You didn't take care of anyone," the brother of one victim told Boylan. "Jumping off the boat, saving your own ass — that was all that was important to you."
The mother of a man who died trapped in the bunkroom recalled hearing her son's voice in a short iPhone video. That video — recorded in the smoke-filled bunkroom and played at trial — showed passengers alive and panicking after Boylan had jumped overboard and told his crew to abandon ship.
"I have not seen one ounce of remorse or responsibility taken by Jerry Boylan," that mother said.
Another mother, who lost three of her daughters on the fatal diving trip, said that she had been a devout Catholic but had since lost her faith. She said her life "had been silenced" by the preventable tragedy.
"This was not an act of God," she said. "You decided not to take care of my family. You left my daughters to burn in that hellish fire."
Boylan didn't address the judge or the family members in person. His lawyer Georgina Wakefield said he would be overcome by emotion if he did.
Instead, Wakefield read a short statement by Boylan in which he expressed his remorse for what happened. In the statement, Boylan said that there was not a day in which he doesn't think about those affected by the tragedy.
Pleading for leniency, Wakefield told the judge that Boylan is a broken man who never leaves the house, suffers from panic attacks and breaks down and cries whenever he tries to have a conversation with anyone.
"Mr. Boylan isn't a bad man," the attorney said in arguing for a sentence of home detention. "Mr. Boylan didn't want this to happen. He wishes everyday that he could go back in time and change what happened."
While declining to spare Boylan prison time, Judge Wu nonetheless imposed a sentence below the guidelines because, he said, he was satisfied with the remorse Boylan had shown. He said he didn't think there was bad intent behind the captain's actions or failures.
Wu rejected the prosecution's request to remand Boylan to custody straightaway, saying he would instead set a surrender date at a July hearing to determine what if any restitution Boylan owes to the victims' families.
“The defendant’s cowardice and repeated failures caused the horrific deaths of 34 people,” United States Attorney Martin Estrada said after the hearing. “The victims’ families will be forever devastated by this needless tragedy. While today’s sentence cannot fully heal their wounds, we hope that our efforts to hold this defendant criminally accountable brings some measure of healing to the families.”
A jury last November deliberated for less than a day before finding Boylan guilty of gross negligence in the deaths of all passengers and a crewmember sleeping below deck on the Conception. A 75-foot plywood and fiberglass vessel, the Conception was anchored near one of the Channel Islands during the deadly fire on Sept. 2, 2019.
Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in LA accused Boylan of failing to train his inexperienced crew to fight fires at sea. They noted the Conception did not have a night patrol, who could have spotted the fire before it was out of control.
The boat was on the last stop of a three-day dive trip over the Labor Day weekend when a fire broke out on the main deck at around 3 a.m. At the time, all passengers were asleep in the bunkroom below deck.
Boylan and four crewmembers were asleep on the upper deck when the fire started. A sixth crewmember was sleeping in the bunk room with the passengers.
The second galley hand was awakened by the sound of fire. When he looked out, he noticed the fire on the main deck and woke the other crewmembers sleeping above.
However, the stairs from the upper deck to the main deck were already blocked by flames, galley hand Mikey Kholes testified, and the crew had to climb or jump down to the main deck. One of them broke his leg in the process. There, they found that the entrance to the salon was engulfed in flames and impossible to enter.
Boylan remained in the wheelhouse to make a distress call — but when the smoke got into the wheelhouse, he jumped overboard while other crewmembers were still trying to break into the salon and reach the passengers below.
One of the crewmembers, worried that Boylan was in danger, jumped after him only to find that the captain was unharmed.
The captain told the crew to abandon the burning boat even though, the prosecution claims, the passengers were still alive below deck. They were found in the following days by rescue divers, with some of them hugging each other in their final moments. A Santa Barbara County coroner determined they had all died from smoke inhalation.
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