Frederick R. Smith Speaks: Justice Railroaded

Frederick R Smith has moved to Frederick R. Smith Speaks (substack.com)

As the turn of the new millennium came and went, there was a story that should have made headline news but raised hardly a peep from our friends at the mainstream establishment media. This was a story that should have caused a stir among those who clamor for the legal rights of the people facing charges. So, what was this problem? A person incarcerated for harming the environment. Did you ever hear about the new term “environmental justice?” Some will say, “Frederick so what?” Please stay tuned, but first some legal background.

An increasing number of people who manage others at the workplace face criminal prosecution for the actions of their corporations. This sounds bad enough but what is even more troubling is that some managers have been criminally charged for the actions of their employees even if the subordinates were acting outside what they were told or against the policy of the employing corporation. This is possible because an ever-increasing number of criminal statutes no longer require intent as a factor in prosecuting.

Since many federal laws deal with items considered to be “public welfare,” the lawmakers have this in mind. Some examples of criminal intent removed for the “public welfare” include healthcare statutes, the environment, and antitrust laws. Naturally, the main culprit is the federal government.

Enter the United States vs. Edward Hanousek, a manager with the Pacific & Arctic Railway and Navigation Company. This company does business as the “White Pass and Yukon Route” (WP&YR) [1] and Hanousek was employed there as a “roadmaster.” His responsibilities included the maintenance of railroad track, wayside structures, and marine facilities. Are you ready to know about the “horrendous” crime that this roadmaster committed? Here it goes – Mr. Hanousek faced criminal charges and served time for damaging the environment in 1994. Now for those who worship mother earth, this may be understandable. The devil is in the details.

The excesses of the government with respect to the environment aside, the more essential element of this case is that Mr. Hanousek was not on duty; he was at home when the incident occurred. To add insult to injury, the incident was due to the actions of an employee of a contractor to the railroad. Since Mr. Hanousek oversaw this operation prosecutors tagged him as the responsible “party.”

The particular project under Hanousek’s direction was a rock quarrying effort at a site next to the railroad known as “six-mile” (Milepost 6). This area is 200 feet above the Skagway River and the project involved removing rock and outcroppings alongside the railroad. Workers moved the loose rock from the track using a backhoe to load it onto railroad cars. At Milepost 6, a high-pressure petroleum products pipeline owned by Pacific & Arctic’s sister company, Pacific and Arctic Pipeline, Inc., runs parallel to the railroad within a few feet of the tracks. It was during the rock clearing operation that the backhoe accidentally, I repeat accidentally, struck the pipeline causing 1,000 to 5,000 gallons of heating oil to flow into the Skagway River in Alaska. The word accident has no meaning in the mind of environmental extremists. Are all people who are involved in car crashes criminally or civilly charged if they accidentally cause such incidents?

Remember, Hanousek was off-duty at the time but was imprisoned for failing to appropriately supervise the worker, which obviously was the “direct cause” of the oil spill. In normal times, the railroad would have faced civil liability for damages resulting from the accident, but now we have blurred the legal distinction between civil liability and felony. Rest assured the environmentalists see this damage to the environment of Alaska to be worse than murdering a person. Authorities charged Hanousek and convicted him under the Clean Water Act, for negligently discharging oil into a navigable water of the United States. Fined $5,000, Hanousek faced sequential terms of six months imprisonment, six months in a halfway house, and six months of supervised release. And the government and its symbiotic elites wonder way some people become “anti-government.”

Hanousek’s lawyers argued that a public welfare law that imposes criminal penalties for ordinary negligence (in this case an accidental act) violates due process. Nevertheless, the court emphasized that the criminal elements of the Clean Water Act make up the “public welfare” legislation to protect the public at large from the consequences of water pollution. It also came out that the court declined to instruct the jury that the defendant was not responsible for and could not be held criminally liable for any negligent act or omissions by the person directly responsible for the leak. The court did not tell the jury that under the criminal laws a person holds responsibility for acts he or she performs or causes on behalf of a corporation. Furthermore, the appellate court also found that the jury instruction was insufficient because it required the jury to find that the defendant’s conduct had a “direct and substantial” connection to the incident.

The appellate court upheld the decision despite the aforementioned. Because of these draconian “public welfare” statutes, even individuals who are virtually uninvolved with the conduct of others may face jail.

So where are the civil libertarians who clamor about the constitutional rights of the “poor criminals” who are charged for raping but “wrongly charged” for some nefarious reason? Crickets. Perhaps these stalwarts of equality believe that the WP&YR case is important? Absolutely not — the environment trumps human rights. Meanwhile, in the 2020 Riot Age, looters get an out of jail free card. We should highlight the looters’ fires and the resulting environmental damage. Perhaps that will result in some true justice (dream on). Constitutional due process is now gone with the wind. Frankly, I am concerned that some environmental zealots refuse to see the unintended consequences of their radical inhuman worship of the planet. While some environmentalists will find it necessary to take the words of this paper out of context, it is necessary to say that I do indeed believe in a good environment through reasoned and reasonable measures.

Considering the plight of Hanousek, this author hopes the people who desire a clean environment would realize that there are excesses in this movement. If Hanousek were a close relative to a sincere ecologist, I would like to believe that they would finally come to realize that certain elements of the environmental movement have been hijacked for reasons other than clean air and water. Nevertheless, some of these same people have a penchant for finding “religious extremism” (that is Christian extremism) in every nook and cranny of society. Curious indeed.

The WP&YR, a narrow-gauge railroad, suspended operations in 1982 when Yukon’s mining industry dried up. A part of this line reopened in 1988 as a seasonal tourism operation. Today, the WP&YR operates during the May-to-September tourism season running on the first 40 miles (Skagway, Alaska to Bennett, B.C.) of the original 110-mile line.

Sources:

UNITED STATES v. HANOUSEK

Criminal? – Rebecca Haglin, Heritage Foundation

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