Captain faces 10 years in prison for fiery deaths of 34 people aboard California scuba dive boat

LOS ANGELES — A submarine captain was expected to be sentenced Thursday by a federal judge for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the ship nearly five years ago.

The September 2, 2019, fire was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history and led to changes in maritime regulations, reforms in Congress and several ongoing lawsuits.

Captain Jerry Boylan was found guilty last year of misconduct or neglect of a ship’s officer. The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, colloquially known as mariner’s manslaughter, and was intended to hold steamboat captains and crewmen responsible for maritime disasters.

Boylan’s appeal is still ongoing. He faces a prison sentence of up to ten years.

The defense is asking the judge to sentence Boylan to five years’ probation, including three years under house arrest.

“While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no doubt that Mr. Boylan did not intend for anyone to die,” his attorneys wrote in a sentencing memo. “Indeed, Mr. Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse and regret. trauma resulting from the death of its passengers and crew.”

The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the last day of a three-day excursion and sank less than 100 feet from shore.

Thirty-three passengers and one crew member died when they were trapped in a sleeping area below deck. Among the dead was the sailor, who had gotten her dream job; an environmental scientist who conducted research in Antarctica; a world traveling couple; a Singaporean data scientist; and a family of three sisters, their father and his wife.

Boylan was the first to abandon ship and jump overboard. Four crew members who joined him also survived.

Thursday’s conviction — unless Boylan’s appeal succeeds — is the final step in a fraught prosecution that has lasted nearly five years and repeatedly frustrated the victims’ families.

A grand jury initially indicted Boylan in 2020 on 34 counts of mariner manslaughter, meaning he could have spent a total of 340 years behind bars. Boylan’s attorneys argued that the deaths resulted from a single incident and not separate crimes, so prosecutors obtained a superseding indictment charging Boylan with only one charge.

In 2022, U.S. District Judge George Wu dismissed the superseding indictment, saying it did not specify that Boylan had acted with gross negligence. Prosecutors were then forced to appear before a grand jury again.

Although the exact cause of the fire aboard the Conception has still not been determined, prosecutors and defense tried to pinpoint blame during last year’s 10-day trial.

The government said Boylan failed to post the required roving night watch and never properly trained his crew in firefighting. The lack of a roving watch allowed the fire to spread unnoticed across the 75-foot boat.

But Boylan’s lawyers tried to blame Glen Fritzler, who with his wife owns Truth Aquatics Inc., which operated the Conception and two other dive boats, often around the Channel Islands. They argued that Fritzler was responsible for failing to train crews in firefighting and other safety measures, and for creating a lax maritime culture they called “the Fritzler way,” in which no captain who worked for him posted a roving watch .

The Fritzlers have not spoken publicly about the tragedy since an interview with a local TV station a few days after the fire. Their lawyers never responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Now that the criminal case has been completed, attention now turns to several ongoing lawsuits.

Three days after the fire, Truth Aquatics filed suit under a pre-Civil War provision of maritime law that allows the company to limit its liability to the value of the boat’s remains, which was a total loss. This time-tested legal maneuver has been used successfully by the owners of the Titanic and other ships, and requires the Fritzlers to prove that they were not at fault.

That case is still pending, as are others brought by victims’ families against the Coast Guard over what they allege is lax enforcement of the roving watch requirement.