Verdicts on Exxon Skipper : Not Guilty on 3 Major Charges

Joseph Hazelwood today was acquitted of three major charges and convicted of one misdemeanor, negligent discharge of oil today, two days before the first anniversary of the nation’s worst oil spill created by his tanker, the Exxon Valdez.

The single charge on which Hazelwood was convicted carries a maximum sentence of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine--far less than the 70 years and $61,000 fine he could have faced.

There were bursts of applause in the court room as Superior Court Judge Karl Johnstone read the first three verdicts of “not guilty.”

Hazelwood’s lawyers patted him on the back, and for the first time in the long trial, the normally solemn defendant smiled broadly.

The jurors absolved Hazelwood of all charges alleging that he was drunk and reckless when the tanker ran aground, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound.

The six-man, six-woman jury pondered Hazelwood’s fate from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. Wednesday and reached their decision after noon today.

Earlier, an alternate juror, relieved of her duty as well as her court-imposed silence when the 12 regular jurors got the case, told reporters that the prosecution failed to prove its case and that she would acquit Hazelwood.

“That’s the way I feel. I hope other jurors feel that way,” said Terry Turner, 30, a bookkeeper, who listened to all the testimony about the March 24, 1989, wreck of the Exxon Valdez.

“I think Captain Hazelwood thought it was going to be a normal transit,” she said of trip that began routinely and ended up causing an 11-million-gallon oil spill, America’s worst.

Turner rejected prosecution arguments that Hazelwood was drunk, saying, “They really don’t have any evidence.”

The defense said the third mate and the helmsman failed to execute turn orders--based on instructions from Hazelwood to return to tanker lanes after a detour around icebergs--and that the Coast Guard radar watchstander should have seen the tanker headed for disaster and warned it.

Hazelwood had left the bridge of the ship about 15 minutes before the grounding.

But Instruction No. 29, of the 49 instructions taking up 51 pages that the judge gave jurors, states, “It is not necessary for the defendant’s actions or inactions in this case to be the sole proximate cause for the risks that were created in this case.

“Where a defendant recklessly creates a risk, the fact that other persons’ acts also contributed to the creation of the risk does not serve to exculpate the defendant. It is only necessary that the defendant’s actions be a cause of the risk.”

In other words, even if others share blame for the wreck, Hazelwood could still have been found guilty if his conduct was judged reckless and played a part in the wreck and spill.

Hazelwood, 43, of Huntington, N.Y., was the only individual charged with crimes arising out of the spill, but the Exxon Corp. and Exxon Shipping Co. were charged in a five-count federal indictment last month and 150 civil suits have been filed against Exxon, many of them also naming Hazelwood.