Will the Flint Water Crisis Really Result in Manslaughter Charges?
The ongoing tragedy in Flint is starting to take on a harder edge, especially if you happen to be one of the public figures who let it happen. A special prosecutor is casting a skeptical eye on the mistakes-were-made alibis that local officials have been spouting since the news of the crimes broke.
Todd Flood, who was appointed as special counsel by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month because Schuette's office is defending the state in civil lawsuits, said manslaughter charges could be on the table if government officials were grossly negligent in their handling of the city's water change and the aftermath. The maximum prison sentence is 15 years. "It's not far-fetched," Flood told reporters, pointing to similar charges against people for deaths on construction sites. He also reiterated the possibility of charges for misconduct in office. Flood said it is possible no crimes were committed-instead just "honest mistakes"-unless authorities breached their duty in a "grossly negligent way." Another factor is what officials did or failed to do after their mistakes. "If I knew something bad was going on ... and I just want to turn my blind eye, that could be a problem," said Flood, a former Wayne County assistant prosecutor who spoke at a news conference with the Republican attorney general and investigators.
I'd like to believe this is something more than Flood's throwing a sop to the people who are so righteously infuriated at being treated as dispensable commodities by their elected government. And I'll believe that Flood et. al. are serious when I see a congressional subpoena dropped on recalcitrant Governor Rick Snyder. (Congress "invited" Snyder? That's adorable.) The recent track record of prosecutors actually jailing important people for poisoning unimportant people is not promising.
U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston sentenced William E. Tis, a former Freedom director and secretary, to three years' probation and ordered Tis to pay a $20,000 fine. Tis had pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of causing an unlawful discharge of refuse matter, and faced a statutory maximum of one year in prison. The charges related to Freedom's spill of MCHM and other chemicals into the Elk River just 1.5 miles upstream from West Virginia American Water's regional drinking water intake. As he had with three previous Freedom defendants, Johnston said that Tis was "hardly a criminal." The judge cited the misdemeanor nature of the charge against Tis and what he said was a lack of any previous criminal record. "I never intentionally hurt anyone in my life," Tis told the judge at Monday's hearing. "I am sorry this happened." Johnston said his sentence for Tis was also based on a motion from Acting U.S. Attorney Carol Casto's office asking for a lighter sentence based on Tis having provided "substantial assistance" to the government's investigation of the spill and of two top Freedom officials, Gary Southern and Dennis Farrell.
Environmental crimes ought to be treated more seriously than crimes of passion or crimes of greed because environmental crimes are generally committed against communities. They kill neighborhoods. They devastate towns. They render places unlivable, sometimes for generations. They do untold psychological damage that can linger for decades. They are, in a very real sense, crimes against nature.
