FBI Opens Criminal Investigation into Baltimore Bridge Collapse | Hacker News Reader

FBI Opens Criminal Investigation into Baltimore Bridge Collapse

apnews.com

87 pointsjbegley57 comments

If I'm reading this correctly, they're investigating something like criminal negligence not suspecting this is an intentional criminal act.

Maybe obvious to anyone keeping up with the story, but I haven't read anything about it since the day it happened.

It may be they lost power because they were (illegally) switching over to their regular dirty fuel early and something went wrong in that process.

Isn't that still 'negligence'.

Versus 'I'm trying to hit this bridge' criminal. Which is how the title kind of sounds, that might be 'click-baity' a bit.

EDIT: Thought, guess switching fuel is more of a direct act, versus just poor maintenance.

People died. Depending on how negligent the crew were, it could rise to the level of manslaughter, even without the act of fuel switching.

But then, insurances are often non-responsible if the root cause is manslaughter, aren’t they?

Not at this level. The insurance company is essentially the guarantor in cases like this via Protection and Indemnity insurance. It’s a prerequisite to entering most ports so that someone with big pockets is on the hook when something like this happens, instead of some tiny management or holding company that can be declared bankrupt and quickly closed.

Maersk and its insurers are going to fight over how they split ultimate responsibility, maybe even go to court over it, but the insurance company is the first big payee in line, even if they’re not responsible for the full (multi-billion dollar) amount.

If the root cause of the actual collision with the bridge was itself an illegal act, then then perhaps the operator could be facing felony murder charges for the deaths of those involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule

But felony murder is still usually reserved for circumstances where the original crime is violent itself. You may be guilty of felony murder if the bank guard shoots one of your fellow robbers... you were committing violence after all. But when criminal negligence is the extent of your original crime, homicide should be limited to, at most I should think, some manslaughter charge.

neglegent homicide and involuntary manslaughter seem to be used interchangeably in the US.

Manslaughter is in fact a subset of homicide

Homicide is literally just person kills person. That includes murder, manslaughter, self defense, etc.

Many states charge people for murder with sufficiently reckless behavior endangering public safety even without violent criminal intent. Such as wildly excessive spending and drunk driving etc.

The underlying logic is risking someone’s life is violent.

I've never once in my 35 years of reading newspapers seen a charge of murder for drunk driving. Are you quite certain of this? I suppose there might be one of those out there, but this can't be a common thing. In most states, there's a specific sort of manslaughter charge just for this sort of crime.

"Felony murder" is a specific crime, and not some generic term. It's when someone is killed during your crime but that you didn't cause the death directly. In those cases, you can be charged with murder (and it's very much a murder charge, not a manslaughter charge) anyway, simply because you set into motion the circumstances that would lead to that criminal killing. Often, when that charge is leveled, you have all sorts of silly liberals defending them "well, he didn't fire the shot himself, blame the other guy" and crap like that.

I keep forgetting that most people don't seem to have much interest in this, nor do they understand any of these crimes. Murder's just an interchangeable word for "someone was killed" for most of you. It's sort of embarrassing. Don't you feel bad that your vote counts as much as mine?

> Are you quite certain of this?

Yes, in this specific case you are misinformed.

“Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni announced today that David Merino Ramirez, age 32, was sentenced today to 15 years to life in state prison after a jury in February convicted him of Murder and Vehicular Manslaughter. Judge Rafael Vasquez imposed the sentence.

On August 21, 2020, around 9:00 p.m., Ramirez was driving northbound at speeds exceeding 80mph on Metz Road between the cities of Greenfield and Soledad. Due to his excessive speed and level of intoxication Ramirez lost control, striking a dirt embankment and flipping his car upside down. His passenger, Noe Santillan, 26, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash by first responders.”

04/11/2024 https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1...

Edit: Newspaper article https://salinasvalleytribune.com/jury-convicts-soledad-man-o...

Different cases:

April 12, 2024 https://www.foxla.com/news/pandolfi-yesenia-aguilar-dui-driv...

March 31 2024 https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/crime/2024/03/31/el-p...

February 1 2024 https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/crime/article284973...

Nationwide it’s quite common.

I don't know if this is a joke or not. You lead with "you are misinformed", and then follow up with

>after a jury in February convicted him of Murder and Vehicular Manslaughter.

In other words, manslaughter not murder. You're using the two terms interchangeably, and they're simply not such, not in any legal discussion. I also like how you get your citations all nice and pretty, got good grades for that in school, I'm guessing... but can't get the substance of your argument right (and couldn't read mine with comprehension, apparently).

Do you understand that "murder" and "manslaughter" are two different classes of crimes, and that the latter, manslaughter is pretty much always the lesser class of crime? Murder generally requires things like intent to kill, premeditation, even "depraved indifference" or callousness. No drunk driver is ever charged with murder, and if they were, it's doubtful that a judge wouldn't pimpsmack it back out of court immediately. I don't know how this can be explained more simply. Jailhouse crooks often get this, and most of them are borderline retarded.

AND means he was convicted of BOTH which is why he’s in for 15 to life. The quote was from the government website for the area he ways convicted not some misinformed 3rd party.

https://www.keglawyers.com/vehicular-manslaughter-penal-code...

PC 192(c) vehicular manslaughter filing, the punishment if convicted can include:

two, four, or six years in the California state prison and that’s it it caps at 6 years not 15 to life.

If you don’t believe them here’s the actual statute: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

Reddit is leaking again.

"Criminal" and "negligence" aren't mutually exclusive

Sure but there are gradations. The law has different categories for these.

1. I'm just bad at maintenance.

2. I was performing an illegal act, like the fuel switch.

3. I'm really intentionally trying to hit this bridge and have done some sabotage to make it happen.

In many jurisdictions 2 and 3 are only treated differently if #2 isn’t a felony or recklessly dangerous.

Example of someone convicted him of Murder for a fatal car accident while driving dunk at 80+MPH. https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/Home/Components/News/News/1...

Interesting

Anybody know if 'fuel switch' is a felony?

I don’t know but doing so while approaching a bridge could also qualify as recklessly dangerous.

Huh. That's surprising to me, in England Murder requires that you intended to cause at least grievous harm. So e.g. you intended to "hospitalize" Jim - but he died, those facts are murder. But if prosecutors don't believe they can show at least intent of grievous harm they aren't to charge murder.

Without intent the most could be (Gross Negligence) Manslaughter, which has a significant sentence considering it doesn't require intent, but is very specifically not Murder.

If you intend to drunkenly drive at 80+ mph, your goal is to risk the lives of others. You might as well not charge people criminally for shooting other people dead while trying to flee, because the intention was to get away, not to kill.

My understanding is that in the US there are different degrees of "murder", the less-serious ones are equivalent to some variants of manslaughter in the UK, while in the UK, "murder" refers only to the kind that gets you a mandatory life sentence.

Best to speak specifically of England (and Wales), some of the UK's countries have different laws.

Yes, "X degree Murder" isn't a thing in the English system and the sentence for Murder will be life imprisonment (what Americans might call "indeterminate" life because you can get parole)

England used to have an oddity where the Home Secretary (ie a government minister, a politician) gets to decide whether some people can be paroled. As you might expect it's not popular politically to parole famous criminals and so certain people regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and other circumstances were refused parole. The Supreme Court eventually concluded this isn't justice, and took away this power. In their ruling (which I fixed a typo in) they looked at a whole suite of interesting cases where people were currently basically facing life with no possibility of parole

1. They decided they need to pick the worst possible criminal circumstance and single that out for this punishment, as punishment is all it is, any other possible purpose isn't circumvented by the existing parole institution - if we want people to show remorse, to accept what they did and why it's wrong, to be useful in their community, or whatever - stuff like that is already what parole is for.

2. They decided that circumstance should be two more separate murders. So e.g. you kill Bill with a hammer, and his wife walks in on you, she tries to intervene, you struggle and stab her, that is two murders, but it's not two separate murders, you could still be paroled some day. Whereas if you've got a habit of hiring prostitutes and then murdering them to relieve stress after a long week at work, those are separate murders, so if you get convicted for two (or more) that's life-means-life.

3. A lot of the really awful people whose cases were front of them haven't committed two separate murders. But, they point out, just because the law doesn't refuse these people the possibility of parole now that a politician doesn't get to decide, it doesn't magically mean they're granted parole. Paroling the guy who just really likes raping old ladies isn't going to happen. He's not even remorseful, he still wants to do it again, so obviously we can't let him out of prison, but we don't need to change his sentence - he's already going to be in prison for the rest of his life anyway.

This reminds me of the situation for Anders Breivik. He killed a whole bunch of kids, but in his country the maximum was 21 years. But Breivik is never getting out, he still believes what he did was good. So in effect it's exactly the same as life-means-life for him, it only makes a difference where it should, for the people who change.

[Edited to fix Breivik's sentence, which I had previously mistakenly believed was Life, in fact it's 21 years and they'll just extend it as necessary until he's dead or stops being a Nazi terrorist]

My impression is that the US defines murder more broadly than the rest of the English-speaking world; the scenario you mention is murder in some US jurisdictions, but I don’t think that would be true in most other English-speaking countries

I guess this is probably connected with the US retaining the felony-misdemeanour distinction when most other countries that inherited their laws from England (including England herself) have abolished it: you literally can’t have a felony murder rule if you get rid of felonies, you can have some somewhat analogous rules, but they usually end up being narrower in practice

Also, for a long time (until the 1950s), murder had a mandatory death penalty in England (and much of the British Empire), which produced pressure to define the crime narrowly (if jurors thought the person was guilty but didn’t deserve death, they’d acquit). Since the abolition of the death penalty, that pressure no longer exists, but there has been little pressure to broaden it either

Intentionally ignoring regulations for convenience, then knocking down the longest bridge in Baltimore is the sort of negligence worth pursuing criminally.

There’s nothing clickbaity about the headline. It’s completely accurate without embellishment. It just didn’t precisely match your expectations.

Weren't the pilot(s) on board still?

This action also seems quite routine. The FBI has regularly opened investigations into plane crashes for example, alongside the NTSB.

After the TWA Flight 800 investigation, they had to change the rules for how that worked because the FBI really badly interfered with the NTSB in that case.

People died in this disaster. If it was in any way the result of negligence, there’s a case for involuntary manslaughter.

I hope these criminal negligence investigations look at systemic issues at the shipping company and don’t just throw the crew under the bus.

An excellent commentary from an actual ships chief engineer for some great context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B9znFDwdBI

There were reports that the dock people said that they had power failures at the dock while loading/unloading. If that is true, and they did not tell the pilots, that may be a problem.

In the video, there is a lot of deep black smoke. That is almost impossible with number 2 diesel.

Seems like they have probable cause to start an investigation.

The black smoke on a modern ship like this can indicate emergency startup (will likely damage engine, only done to perhaps avoid knocking over a bridge), or sometimes the emergency generators.

So the NTSB investigation won’t be good enough?

> Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced a partnership with two law firms to “launch legal action to hold the wrongdoers responsible” and mitigate harm to city residents.”

I’m afraid this won’t really identify the root causes and make all the stakeholders less likely to be honest.

The NTSB doesn't investigate crimes.

More than that, to my knowledge, they can't be used as evidence of crimes.

The NTSB runs as a "blameless postmortem" org. Their findings are to be used to change systemic processes.

For good reason: if your priority is safety moving foward, you don't want people hiding information about incidents because they are concerned about repercussions.

Right, and you get different answers when you ask different questions too.

In the UK there's a case where the RAIB (accident investigators) concluded that systemically it was not possible for the human doing the job to ensure that particular accident (resulting in the death of a rail passenger) doesn't happen. So they made recommendations for how to prevent it in future on that basis.

But the human who was actually there doing the job was prosecuted, successfully and I believe sentenced to prison, because (prosecutors made the argument) regardless of whether it was technically true that it might have happened anyway, the death did happen, and it did happen while the accused wasn't strictly doing everything by the book.

As the sibling comment says the NTSB doesn't investigate crimes, and you don't need to wait for an NTSB report to believe their could have been criminal negligence, or to being an investigate into that.

If someone was negligent and caused this accident and these deaths, they should be held accountable. That will keep people in similar positions in the future more likely to be honest and accountable, not less. You don't avoid prosecuting crimes on the off chance it will make criminals more likely to lie about being criminals.

'Blameless postmortem' requires people are able to discuss things without being blamed.

If they are (or are likely to be) being criminally prosecuted, being completely candid would require they'd have to be idiots or so clearly innocent of wrongdoing even the most cynical lawyer thinks it will be fine.

Even if someone tries to falsify evidence or frame their client.

Which everything being easy and fine is not very likely, frankly.

Especially when a bunch of pissed off commuters and taxpayers are pressuring politicans, families are looking for compensation for dead relatives, and you're front page news globally - with damages running in the hundreds of millions at a minimum.

Eyewitness testimony tends to be less detailed, less reliable, less timely, less actionable, and less useful, the further one gets from an event, temporally. Best to get it sooner vs. later.

Throwing the operating crew under the bus is a classic technique in maritime to absolve the true responsibility -- the poor design of the system, especially "flags of convenience" and insufficient oversight in other jurisdictions.

Excellent book on "Normal Accidents" with a chapter focused on maritime safety (or lack thereof): https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-Living-High-Risk-Tec...

A shorter article that summarizes a few risk frameworks including Normal Accident Theory referenced above: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ae3HecTe2uKscabPe/a-gentle-i...

How does insufficient oversight in other jurisdictions apply when the ship was exiting a US harbor?

My understanding is it's the responsibility of every port to clear seaworthiness of vessels putting out (not exhaustively, perhaps, but enough to ensure that, for example, they don't wreck your bridges on the way out of your harbor).

I encourage you to read the sources but the TLDR as I understand it that seaworthiness requirements vary significantly by the region to which the vessel is registered. The port doesn’t have the same regulatory power, nor the resources, as a nation state to investigate and enforce, especially with regards to long term preventative maintenance

I read the day after the event about electrical issues on the ship before leaving port. Interesting that it's taken this long for that to become a subject of investigation.

Actual title of the article is “Ship that caused bridge collapse had apparent electrical issues while still docked, AP source says”.

Anyone have anything above speculation on what is the potential reasoning here?

Perhaps to do with detaining members of the ship crew in the US?

Got it - thanks for the hypothesis.

From article seems like there may have been known problems before they departed.

A different take - the FBI is absolutely going to open a criminal negligence case in any disaster like this, even without direct suspicion, because there's a reasonable possibility there was negligence just by the nature of the incident.

Agreed. From NTSB's website[0]: "In cases of suspected criminal activity, other agencies may participate in the investigation. We do not investigate criminal activity. Our focus is solely on transportation safety and determining probable cause. If a transportation tragedy is determined to be a criminal act, local law enforcement or the FBI becomes the lead investigative body."

The FBI opening a case does not guarantee that someone will be charged with a crime per se, but the timing of this announcement coming weeks after the collapse, not hours or days after, suggests its not simply a procedural matter. Rather that something was found and given to the FBI to investigate further.

0: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/process/Pages/default.as...

You can look at earlier bridge collapses / shipping lane incidents for reference. BrickImmortar has a nice youtube channel for that.

According to WaPo:

> a probe that will look at least in part at whether the crew left the port knowing the vessel had serious systems problems, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/04/15/balitmore...

It is illegal for bridges to fall down. If it isn't, it should be! (Sarcasm, of course).

Often things like this are a technicality somewhere, where the FBI needs the funds unlocked to do X Y and Zed and the way to unlock them in this case is a criminal investigation.

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