Attorneys make closing arguments in trial of Oshkosh man accused of causing 2022 Fox River boat crash
OSHKOSH – The seventh day of trial for an Oshkosh man accused of recklessly endangering safety in a 2022 boat crash wrapped up Tuesday with closing arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys.
Jurors will return Wednesday morning to begin deliberations.
Jason Lindemann, 53, is charged with two felony counts of second-degree recklessly endangering safety, as well as 12 misdemeanor counts of failing to render aid in a boating accident and one misdemeanor count of negligent operation of a boat.
Assistant attorneys general Emily Thompson and Tara Jenswold say Lindemann's behavior the night of the crash was criminally reckless, and he knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to other people out on the water by driving his boat after a day of drinking, not turning on the proper lights on his boat and operating the boat at a high rate of speed.
"It's Jason Lindemann – and Jason Lindemann alone – who is responsible for this crash," Jenswold said during the prosecution's closing argument.
Lindemann's defense attorney, Scott Ceman, argues the crash was nothing more than an accident and if anyone was at fault, it was the driver of the paddleboat, not Lindemann.
The paddleboat operator, Ceman argued, had bright exterior lights on the boat that are only supposed to be activated when docking, and caused a visibility issue by hiding the paddleboat's navigational lights and blending it in with the bright lights on the shoreline.
Just before 10 p.m. on July 9, 2022, Lindemann crashed his powerboat, filled with six passengers, into a double-decker paddleboat cruise owned and operated by On The Loos Cruises, on the Fox River in Oshkosh, between the Oregon Street and Wisconsin Street bridges.
Lindemann had accelerated his boat after passing under the bridge — which, Ceman pointed out at trial, is standard practice for boats after exiting the no wake zone.
The owner and operator of the On The Loos Cruise paddleboat, Jeff Loos, told investigators he saw Lindemann's powerboat speeding toward his boat. He said it appeared the powerboat might pass on the left at one point and on the right at another. When Loos realized his boat was going to be hit, he began turning his boat, which attorneys said has a maximum speed of about five miles per hour. Lindemann's boat crashed into the paddleboat's left side, its hull going up in the air.
Prosecutors say after crashing into the paddleboat, Lindemann drove away without stopping to share his identification information or make sure everyone on the boat were all right. Police didn't find Lindemann until the following day, after he had spent the night in his boat on Lake Winnebago.
The paddleboat had 44 passengers on board. No one was seriously injured, but some passengers experienced minor injuries that they received treatment for in the days and weeks after the crash. The 12 charges of failing to render aid in a boating accident correspond with 12 people who suffered injuries in the crash — including one of the six passengers aboard Lindemann's powerboat.
In her closing argument, Jenswold said Lindemann's failure to stop at the scene after crashing and seemingly hiding in his boat until morning is evidence he was aware of his guilt.
"If it was an accident, why'd you leave?" she said.
Jenswold also pointed out that an officer testified earlier in the trial that messages and calls from the evening of the crash into the next morning appeared to have been deleted from Lindemann's phone when officers conducted a search of it.
In the defense's closing argument, Ceman countered that Lindemann did in fact pull up next to the paddleboat after the crash, but could not safely stop due to some intoxicated passengers from the paddleboat acting "aggressive" toward him.
He also said officers never considered that the case was not a hit-and-run, and thus did not properly investigate. Ceman also claimed the boat crash investigation was not thoroughly carried out because there were no serious injuries.
Despite the prosecution's claims, Ceman argued that Lindemann was not drunk that night. Because officers did not get in touch with Lindemann the night of the crash, the prosecution called witnesses who had seen Lindemann at two bars earlier in the day to testify that they believed he appeared intoxicated.
A few witnesses, however, testified that Lindemann was not drinking. Ceman argued these witnesses, who had been spending time with Lindemann during the day, were more credible than people who observed him from afar. Prosecutors said witnesses who had close personal relationships with Lindemann were likely protecting him.
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Attorneys similarly disagreed about the credibility of other witnesses.
In his closing argument, Ceman named multiple witnesses who had testified during the trial and claimed they had lied about various things. Some, he said, lied about the crash's impact on them likely for motivations of benefiting from civil lawsuits filed against Lindemann.
He said one passenger's description of blood and glass on the paddleboat's deck after the crash was "just another lie in a parade of lies put forth here by the state."
In the prosecution's rebuttal argument, Jenswold pointed out that of the 54 witnesses the state called to testify at the trial, Ceman claimed in his closing argument that at least 16 of them lied.
"To get up here and say, as the defense did, 'they're all lying' — that just doesn't make sense," Jenswold said. "These people that he has called liars, many of them had no motive to lie."
Jury instructions and closing arguments took up the entire afternoon, about 3½ hours. Winnebago County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gibbs decided to send the jury home instead of beginning deliberations Tuesday evening, after what he said has been a long trial.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ArseneauKelli.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Closing arguments heard in trial of Oshkosh man accused in boat crash
