Manslaughter Indictment Dismissed in 2019 Dive Boat Fire That Killed 34

A federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed a manslaughter indictment against the captain of a dive boat that caught fire in 2019 off the coast of Southern California, killing all 33 passengers and one of six crew members, according to an order made public on Friday.

The indictment against Jerry Boylan, 68, the captain of the Conception, a 75-foot commercial scuba diving vessel, was thrown out because it failed to allege gross negligence, according to the order issued by Judge George H. Wu of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Mr. Boylan “presented persuasive reasons for why the statute should be read to require gross negligence as an element necessary for conviction (and indictment),” Judge Wu wrote in a tentative ruling dated Tuesday, according to court records. Gross negligence is generally considered to involve a reckless disregard for the safety of others.

In opposing Mr. Boylan’s motion, prosecutors said in court documents that the statute Mr. Boylan was charged under requires only simple negligence, not gross negligence, and that every appellate court had rejected the argument he was making.

Prosecutors will seek approval from the Justice Department to appeal the ruling, Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, said in an email on Friday.

A lawyer for Mr. Boylan did not immediately reply to phone and email messages on Friday.

The passengers aboard the vessel were sleeping below deck on Labor Day when the fire began on a trip to the Channel Islands, a national park south of Santa Barbara. Diagrams indicated the boat had a single exit up to the galley, and the authorities attributed the deaths to smoke inhalation. The cause of the fire could not be determined, investigators said.

Calling the sinking a “preventable tragedy,” prosecutors charged Mr. Boylan with seaman’s manslaughter and said the deaths of the crew member and passengers were caused by his “misconduct, negligence, and inattention to his duties.” Actions that caused the deaths included failing to conduct crew training and not having a night watch or a roving patrol on duty when the fire broke out in the early morning hours of Sept. 2, according to court documents.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Boylan was the first person who abandoned ship, jumping directly from the wheelhouse into the water amid the chaos that ensued after another crew member spotted the fire.

“There is no evidence that defendant ever attempted to grab the fire ax or fire extinguisher or otherwise attempt to fight the fire before abandoning ship,” prosecutors wrote. “Nor did defendant use the Conception’s PA system to alert the passengers about the fire.”

Mr. Boylan told investigators that he had been awakened by the crew and was able to make a call to the Coast Guard before jumping overboard. Five of the six crew members escaped. The boat, which was operated by Truth Aquatics, eventually sank north of Santa Cruz Island. It had been in operation since 1981.

In a statement, family members of seven victims said they were stunned at the judge’s decision and called it “an outrageous miscarriage of justice” on the third anniversary of the fire, according to The Associated Press.

“The captain accepted the responsibility of ‘duty of care’ when he received his merchant mariner’s credential,” they wrote. “He violated that duty and then was the first to abandon the vessel.”