Engineer Pressed In Dumping Case

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by Nick Vinocur | Aug 31, 2007 10:41 am

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Posted to: Legal Writes

As the government wrapped up its case against a Greek shipping company in New Haven federal court, defense attorneys rallied to try to discredit the testimonies of the last three witnesses to appear in the trial.

The defensive tactic was deployed at the federal courthouse in New Haven on Thursday, the seventh day of a federal trial against the Greek shipping company Ionia Management S.A. Attorneys for both parties said they were ready to offer closing arguments.

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

For the past ten days, Ionia 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. The tanker’s second engineer, who is also charged in connection with the pollution violations, pleaded guilty to the charges last July after reaching a plea agreement with the U.S. District Attorney’s office.

In his testimony Thursday, Second Engineer Edgardo Mercurio (pictured at the top of this story) said he had agreed to cooperate with the government when he realized the severity of the charges against him.

After lying to Coast Guard investigators about the existence of a “magic hose” during several interviews onboard the Kriton, Mercurio said he decided to tell the truth in exchange for a plea agreement with the government. As a result, ten felony counts were erased from Mercurio’s indictment, and a $250,000 fine was waived.

Now, Mercurio faces six months in prison for his role in the illegal dumping, and for instructing crew-members to lie to the Coast guard. He may be eligible for probation if US District Judge Janet Bond Arterton agrees to it.

During cross-examination, defense attorney George Chalos questioned Mercurio’s motivation for testifying against Ionia Management, suggesting that he had changed his story in order to obtain the sentence reduction.

“That’s an awful big motivation for you to embellish your story here, isn’t it,” Chalos asked, referring to the plea agreement.

“I’m just trying to tell the truth,” answered Mercurio.

Chalos argued that Mercurio should be held personally responsible for all the illegal discharges made under his watch, as Ionia had offered him training on how to avoid deep-sea pollution. But Mercurio insisted that he “could not have done it if [he] wasn’t instructed to.”

The government then rolled out Dr. James Galt, an expert in ocean surface patterns who has been testifying in court on behalf of the government for the past 30 years. Prosecutors asked him to interpret an aerial photograph taken from a Dutch Transport Ministry aircraft that allegedly showed the M/T Kriton trailing an oil slick across the North Sea.

The image projected in the courtroom showed an irregular gray expanse — the North Sea — streaked with a line of darker gray.

The dark streak was clearly an oil slick, Galt said.

Chalos disagreed with his assessment, arguing that Dr. Galt had arrived at his conclusion without taking all pertinent information into account.

“Are you familiar with the make and model of the Dutch machine used to take this picture?” Chalos asked.

“No, but I’ve worked with similar machines in the U.S., and they are identical in structure,” Galt answered.

Chalos countered that severe wind conditions on the North Sea would have rendered the aerial-imaging equipment unreliable. Furthermore, he said, it was impossible to identify the M/T Kriton from the image.

Finally, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Brown called a Coast Guard officer to the stand to testify about an inspection of the M/T Kriton that took place in New York in January of 2006.

At the time, inspectors had found that a piece of pipe near an opening in the bulkhead was missing. But the finding had not caused much alarm among the inspectors; they issued a report and ordered the Kriton to have the part replaced before leaving the port.

Lt. Craig Toomey, who was part of the team that boarded the tanker, said engine room workers had told him that removing the piece of piping before entering a harbor was “standard ship procedure.” Nonetheless, he found the practice to be “unusual” and indicated in his report that it may have been intended to cover up a discharge mechanism.

Chalos asked Toomey if he found Kriton had been in breach of any maritime laws.

“No,” came the answer.

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