New Haven Independent

Standing before a 16-member jury in U.S. District Court in New Haven Wednesday, Brown argued that “crew testimony alone” from Filipino sailors (like Ricky Lalu, pictured) was all the jury needed to prove the company had broken federal law.

For the last two weeks, Ionia Management S.A. has been battling allegations that crew-members aboard one of its ships, the tanker M/T Kriton, routinely pumped waste oil overboard using a “magic hose” to bypass pollution-control equipment onboard. Attorneys on both sides gave closing arguments Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton.

Click here, here, here, here and here for previous stories on the trial.

Brown took the podium first, summing up the witness and expert testimony that had taken place over the last week. His task: Show that there is enough evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, to prove that the company falsified entries in its oil record books — a sign of a covered-up dumping scheme.

Brown cited testimony from the tanker’s second engineer, Edgardo Mercurio (pictured), who pleaded guilty to pollution violations last July after reaching a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s office. Mercurio, who told the court Tuesday he feared for his life and career after testifying against his employer, faces a reduced sentence of up to six months in prison.

Brown reminded the jury of Mercurio’s testimony that those aboard the ship never even used the incinerator designed to properly dispose of oily waste. Instead, at the direction of the ship’s chief engineer, sailors waited until they were “far out at sea,” “under the cover of darkness,” then slipped the sludge out the so-called “magic hose.” His testimony was enough to show “these oil records book entries were false, and [top ship officials] knew it!”

The government alleges oil was dumped routinely as the ship passed from Florida in January 2006 to New Haven in March 2007, when the U.S. Coast Guard detained the vessel on a tip from a whistleblower. According to Lalu’s testimony, the waste oil was so thick at one point during the voyage from Florida to New Haven that it had to be heated before it could fit through the hose, Brown told the jury.

“Here it is,” said the slender prosecutor, holding up a jar of black sludge for a panel of jurors to see. “That’s what’s been going into the ocean.”

Building on crew testimony, Brown argued physical evidence reinforced their case: He showed a photo Lalu had snapped, supposedly showing the magic hose while an illegal pump-out was in process. He showed an aerial shot of the ship in the North Sea, allegedly trailing a long oil slick, and entries in an oil record book that an expert had deemed “implausible.”

Brown painted ship higher-ups as knowingly covering up the pattern of dumping. He told the court of how a crewmembers had testified that ship personnel took a hack-saw blade and “chopped up the magic hose, never to be seen again!”

Members of the 16-person jury mulled the summary from their seats on the side of the courtroom, holding binders of instructions. Then they listened to George Chalos, Ionia’s attorney, give last words in rebuttal before they retired to deliberate.

Chalos, wearing a pink shirt beneath his dark jacket, leaned on the podium and spoke to the jury in more colloquial terms, tossing out phrases like “jerky guy.” As he had during cross-examinations in court, he sought to discredit the Filipino crew members, arguing they were motivated by rewards to rat out their employers. The jury must decide if witnesses “were just lying again for their own reasons,” he said.

Chalos also sought to peg the alleged misdeeds on individuals, instead of the company. If any “magic hose” had been used to excrete oil, it was against company rules, he argued. Mercurio, who testified to the dumping, and others accused of collusion in the scheme, would have been acting in personal capacities outside of the authority given by their employer, he argued: “There’s no authority for these guys to use a magic hose.”

Chalos pointed to a “lack of specific dates, times and places” in crew members’ testimony, and argued the magic hose, in the way it was described, would have been “very difficult” to connect, as it would have involved a person passing very close by a spinning propeller while the ship was in motion.

A crew member had testified to hiding a portion of the severed hose in a box when coast guard inspectors came aboard the ship. No magic hose was ever uncovered. Indeed, Chalos urged the jury to question “whether there even was a magic hose at all.”

The jury retired for the day without returning a verdict, according to court staff.