Prosecutor: Ellreese Daniels lied to save his career

Ellreese Daniels is going to be sentenced Wednesday at 10 a.m. in the U.S. District Court in Spokane.

From the Wenatchee World:

By K.C. Mehaffey
World staff writer
SPOKANE — After dropping manslaughter charges against the crew boss of four firefighters who died in the Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop, a federal prosecutor has assigned a motive to why Ellreese Daniels lied to investigators after the fatal 2001 wildfire.

Daniels, 47, of Lake Wenatchee, wanted to save his firefighting career, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Hopkins.

A former co-worker, however, says Daniels is not at all calculating, and would not have been thinking about his career when investigators interviewed him just after the fire. His defense attorney, Tina Hunt, filed a response Friday to Hopkins’ charge, saying Daniels believed he was telling the truth when investigators questioned him.

Daniels is the first Forest Service employee to be charged for the deaths of firefighters who died under his command, but the involuntary manslaughter charges were dropped in April when he pleaded guilty to two counts of making false statements to investigators. He will be sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Spokane.

Killed were Devin Weaver, 21; Jessica Johnson, 19; and Karen FitzPatrick, 18, all from Yakima; and Tom Craven, 30, from Ellensburg.

The four were trapped on the Chewuch Road north of Winthrop with 10 other firefighters and two campers when fire swept over them on July 10, 2001. All deployed fire shelters, but the four firefighters were up on a rock slope where they could not properly deploy their shelters.

Daniels pleaded guilty to lying about two things: First, that he told the firefighters who died at least three times to come down from the rocks because it was not a good place to be. And second, that neither of two fire engines reported to him when they arrived at the fire.

Hunt wrote that Daniels has already suffered the consequences for his actions, and should serve no jail time. He is no longer qualified to fight fires, was removed from the fire division with the Forest Service, and was reassigned to the supply cache, her response stated.

Hopkins said he’ll seek a four-month sentence in the custody of the federal Department of Corrections with one year of probation.

He said he believes Daniels should serve in the upper half of the standard range for the misdemeanor charge, which is zero to six months for someone with a low criminal history, such as Daniels. One prior conviction, for assault, counts against Daniels under sentencing guidelines, according to documents provided by the prosecution.

Hopkins said Daniels appeared to lie about all the key turning points that would have shown his poor decisions leading to the firefighters’ deaths.

“Mr. Daniels lied to investigators for the purpose of shifting responsibility for the deaths of the four firefighters to others, to include the victims, in an effort to save his career,” his court document states. It later adds that deployment of fire shelters triggers an automatic investigation, and, “In a profession where success, courage, and image are important, Mr. Daniels wanted to avoid an unnecessary deployment that could hurt his standing among his peers and reduce his prospects for choice assignments and promotion.”

He also wrote that Daniels has only made excuses for his poor performance as an incident commander, but has not recognized that his false information led investigators to false conclusions and wasted government resources.

The false statements exposed an engine foreman to potential disciplinary action, and caused families of the firefighters unnecessary anxiety and anguish, Hopkins wrote.

Heather Murphy, who used to work with Daniels at the Wenatchee River Ranger District, said it’s doubtful that Daniels was thinking about his career when he was trying to assess whether the fire would sweep over his crew.

“It’s ridiculous. With all the years of service, it’s not like he was a ladder-climbing person at all,” she said. Murphy said it makes no sense for anyone assessing a fire to think about what their peers would think if they had to deploy fire shelters.

“I wasn’t there, so it’s really hard for me to respond, but I’ve been on enough fires — around 40 or 50 — to know that you often don’t think you’re going to be overtaken by fire,” she said.

Attorney Tina Hunt, in her response to the prosecutor’s court filing, wrote that Daniels simply forgot the engine supervisor had checked in with him during the fire, and had to be taken back to the site to recall it. She also wrote that while Daniels may not have ordered firefighters to come down from the rocks, others recalled him stating that the road was the place to be, and that he believed he communicated his desire for them to come down from the rocks.

She also wrote that Daniels continues to have nightmares about the incident, and likely suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Mr. Daniels knows that his actions, in part, led to these tragedies. However, he has also had to deal with the fact that NO OTHER PERSON has been forced to be held criminally responsible other than himself,” her response states.

Firefighters' liability

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle has a lengthy article about the modern-day realities of fighting fire in our liability-ridden, wildland-urban interface choked climate today. Here is a brief excerpt.

Dick Mangan has fought fires around the country for 40 years and can wear a number of hats: operations chief, planning chief and safety officer.

He’s also past president of the International Association of Wildland Fire, a professional association with thousands of members. He knows his business.

But these days, when he goes on a fire, his wife issues a warning.

“My wife tells me, ‘Don’t do something stupid. I don’t want to lose the house,’” he said.

Like many fires bosses, Mangan has a new concern: personal and legal liability if something goes wrong and lives or property are lost.

The issue got serious in 2006, when Ellreese Daniels was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and three other felonies, five years after four people under his command died in the Thirtymile fire in Washington.

The charges were later reduced and Daniels has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of making false statements to investigators. His sentencing is scheduled for July 23.

But the event cast a pall in command tents at fire camps across the nation.

“It puts a very, very dark cloud over everybody in the fire community,” said Mangan, of Missoula.

Photo of Dick Mangan, by Bill Gabbert, at the 2006 Wildland Fire Safety Summit, Pasadena, CA, put on by the International Association of Wildland Fire

Video about Ellreese Daniels plea agreement

I just discovered this 2 minute video about Ellreese Daniels’ April 29, 2008 plea agreement. It is a news segment produced by KXLY television in Spokane, Washington. It has some B-roll footage of the Thirtymile fire scene that was new to me and also gives the local perspective of the case.

Ellreese Daniels' attorney requests support

Ellreese Daniels was the Crew Boss and Type 3 Incident Commander on the Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop, Washington in 2001 on which four members of his crew were overrun by fire and died. On January 30, 2007 the U.S. Attorney in Spokane, Washington charged him with eleven felony charges– four counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of making false statements, which could have led to 56 years in prison.

On April 29 the U.S. Attorney reduced the eleven felony charges down to two misdemeanor charges of making false statements to investigators, to which Ellreese pled guilty.

Sentencing will occur August 18 and could result in probation or up to six months in jail.

Wildfire Today has posted about this case eight times.

Ellreese’s attorney, Tina Hunt, is requesting that:

“…if anyone would like to write a letter of support for Ellreese or to write a letter letting the court know how this case has affected them, I would be more than happy to collect those. I would rather they come directly to me so that I may make certain that the Court receives them.”

Her address is:

Christina Hunt
Federal Defenders of Eastern WA and ID
10 N. Post St., Ste. 700
Spokane, WA 99201

If you have been following this case on Wildfire Today, you know how I stand. I was not on the Thirtymile Fire, so all I know is what I read in the report and from talking with some people very close to the situation.

Ellreese may have made some mistakes on the fire… a fire that exhibited extreme fire behavior. He and his crew had been on their shift for 24-36 hours with little or no sleep. He met all of the training and experience qualifications. I have to assume that he did the best that he possibly could with all the tools he had at his disposal. He only wanted the best for his crew.

Any firefighter in a supervisory or leadership capacity, wildland or structural, can make mistakes. If they are subject to felony charges, decades in prison, losing their job, their retirement, and their livelihood, and ruining their lives and the lives of their families, many are not going to accept this additional risk.

Structural firefighters should be very concerned about this. Now that Ellreese has pled guilty to two misdemeanors, has that already set a precedent to a certain extent? (Any attorneys out there?) And, if he receives any kind of jail or prison sentence, will all firefighters then be subject to this procedure which will no doubt spread from wildland fire out into the larger structural fire community? Some say the U.S. Attorney that brought the 11 felony charges forward is seeking a better, higher-paying position. There are lots of District Attorneys out there that may also be looking to get their names in the paper or run for higher office.

The job has plenty of risks we can do little about. This is a risk we CAN do something about through legislation and other means.

Firefighters are now being advised by their peers to “lawyer up” if they are involved in a serious on the job accident. They will be very hesitant to say ANYTHING about it if they feel their lives could be ruined. Lessons will not be learned from mistakes. More people may be exposed to hazardous situations that could be prevented if we could talk about previous close calls or accidents.

Here is what you need to do. Take 15 minutes and invest it in your future and the safety of your fellow firefighters. Write a letter as Tina suggested, explaining how you feel about this, and how it affects you…and your family.

Yakima Herald-Republic's editorial about Thirtymile plea bargain

The Yakima Herald-Republic has always taken the position that Ellreese Daniels and others should be punished severely for the errors in judgment that led to the deaths of the four firefighters on the Thirtymile fire in 2001. They are not pleased with the recent plea bargain in the case, according to their editorial published yesterday:

“In a New Year’s Eve editorial on the last day of 2006, we were willing to concede at the time that “four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied.”

That hope has been dashed now that a plea-bargaining deal has led to fire crew chief Ellreese Daniels pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in Spokane Tuesday to two misdemeanor charges of making false statements to investigators.

The magnitude of the reduction in charges is staggering: In exchange, the government dropped four felony counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven felony counts of making false statements.

Sentencing is set for July 23 August 18.

“Like all plea agreements, there was a recognition of the evidence and the law as it exists,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said in an Associated Press report out of Spokane. “We feel this is an appropriate disposition of the case.”

Really? Will there ever be “appropriate disposition” of a case in which so many nagging doubts and unanswered questions remain? Four people died and the only person charged in the incident gets a plea-bargaining slap on the wrist and won’t have to face trial — during which a more complete story of what happened up to and during that fateful day could unfold during testimony.

Frankly, we’ve been less than impressed from the start with the federal government’s handling, at all levels, of the Thirtymile incident.

We also take note of the fact that Daniels was the only one to face criminal charges out of the fire near Winthrop that killed four Central Washington firefighters on July 10, 2001: Tom Craven of Ellensburg, and Karen FitzPatrick, Jessica Johnson and Devin Weaver, all from Yakima.

We remain convinced that Daniels must answer in part for the tragedy because he was directly responsible for the safety of his crew. But we also maintain that the blame for the Thirtymile debacle involves much more than just what happened on the fire line that day. Blame must also extend further up the chain of command and include a culture of stonewalling and cover-up so prevalent in the U.S. Forest Service at the time.

In addition, a September 2001 investigation by this newspaper revealed that the Forest Service broke more than a dozen of its own safety rules. Federal investigators came to an even more damning conclusion: The Forest Service had 28 rules in place to keep crews safe. At Thirtymile, 20 of them were broken, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The negligence, according to the original charges, included Daniels failing to prepare the crew for the possibility of being overrun by flames.

The fact he was singled out prompts memories of the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when Iraqi prisoners were mistreated by United States military personnel. Of 10 people convicted out of that debacle, none ranked higher than staff sergeant. That in a system noted for its chain of command that demands the following of orders.

Reforms within the agency were supposed to ensure a tragedy such as Thirtymile never happened again. Yet, seven firefighters have been fatally trapped since by forest fires in Idaho and California.

That’s not to simply say the lessons of Thirtymile have not been heeded. After all, we’re talking about a very dangerous line of work, one in which every possible step must be taken to ensure the safety of firefighters on the line.

But we also don’t totally agree with the fears of many in the firefighting community that the unprecedented prosecution of Daniels might send a chilling message into the ranks of his colleagues across the nation — that they could face felony charges if something similar happened on their watches.

Anyone responsible for neglect of duty that leads to tragic consequences should face such charges. In our system of justice, whether such charges are justified is determined in a trial with all the pertinent facts on display, not with plea bargaining.

The plea deal may have technically closed the books on the prosecutorial phase of Thirtymile. But the nagging question remains: Will justice ever be completely, and adequately, served in this case?”

Ellreese Daniels pleads guilty to two misdemeanors

At the federal district court today in Spokane, Washington, Ellreese Daniels plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of making false statements to investigators. The federal prosecutors dropped the four federal felony charges of involuntary manslaughter related to the deaths of the four firefighters on the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Washington in 2001.

In addition to the four involuntary manslaughter charges, Daniels had been charged with seven counts of making false statements to investigators, a federal misdemeanor.

Daniels could have faced as much as six years in prison for each of the four manslaughter charges. Now he faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine for each of the two remaining misdemeanors, although the standard range is much less.

Sentencing was set for July 23 August 18. Yesterday in an email, Daniels’ attorney, Tina Hunt, said she expected there to be a “contested sentencing hearing”.

I have mixed feelings about the plea agreement. The procedure today means that Daniels will not have to serve lengthy jail time for the felony charges, he will not have a felony conviction on his record, he probably will not lose his job with the US Forest Service, and he will not lose his retirement.

His attorney said that the defense had a strong case. This is also indicated by the fact that the federal prosecutors dropped all of the felony charges and five of the seven misdemeanor charges in return for the guilty pleas on the two misdemeanors.

If I had been in Daniels’ shoes, I may have done the same thing. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be facing those four felony charges, serious prison time, and the loss of the job and his retirement.

Looking at the larger picture, and from a selfish perspective, this is a mixed blessing for the fire community. It would have been better for firefighters if all of the charges had been dropped, or if they had been thrown out or defeated in court.

But perhaps the next over-zealous prosecutor seeking to to beef up their resume will be less inclined to throw around ridiculous felony charges when someone makes an honest mistake on a fire.

The International Association of Wildland Fire documented with their survey the fact that many firefighters were very concerned about the harmful effects these charges would have on the fire community. In the survey, 36% said they would make themselves less available for fire assignments because of the charges that were filed against Daniels.

Making an honest mistake on a fire should not have the potential to ruin your life and the life of your family.

Photo of Ellreese Daniels courtesy of the Spokesman-Review

Ellreese Daniels' plea hearing April 29

An email message from Tina Hunt, Ellreese’s attorney dated today, April 28:

Hi All,

As some of you know, I believe we have finally reached a compromise with the government in this case. In exchange for dismissing all 11 felony counts, the government will agree to offer a plea to 2 misdemeanor counts of making a false statement in an official writing. I will be recommending to the court that Ellreese should receive no time, the government may recommend a sentence of jail time. I strongly feel that this is a case that does not merit a jail sentence, so I am comfortable with the plea to the misdemeanors.

As you all know, this is a case which I have felt very passionately about. I am more convinced than ever of Ellreese’s innocence on ALL of the counts, however, there remains a risk that if we proceed to trial, he could be found guilty of at least one felony. There comes a time and place to put some closure on this matter, and Ellreese is comfortable with this resolution. I hope that the witnesses and families may also find some peace now.

I anticipate that we will still have a contested sentencing hearing in late summer.

We currently have a tentative change of plea set for tomorrow (April 29) at 11:00 a.m. in Spokane before Judge Van Sickle. The address of the courthouse is: 920 W. Riverside Avenue, Spokane, WA. It is open to the public, and I’m sure that if you can be present, Ellreese and I would appreciate it greatly.

Tina

We covered this earlier, here.

Ellreese Daniel's trial schedule

Ellreese Daniels was the Crew Boss and Type 3 Incident Commander on the Thirtymile Fire near Winthrop, Washington in 2001 on which four members of his crew were overrun by fire and died. On January 30, 2007 the U.S. Attorney in Spokane, Washington charged him with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of making false statements.

Now the trial schedule has been established by the court:

THIS MATTER is scheduled for trial beginning May 5, 2008 and ending July 2, 2008. Counsel shall meet with the Court in chambers at 8:30 a.m. on the first day of trial. Jury Selection will begin at 10:00 a.m. Trial will be held each day from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. excluding the following days: May 9, May 16, May 22, May 23, May 26, June 5, June 6, June 20, and June 23 -27.

I hope that there will be some people attending the trial as spectators who will be recognizable as firefighters. But since it appears that the trial could go on for 2 months, that’s going to be difficult to do on a continuing basis.

We covered this issue earlier, here, here, and here.

Ellreese Daniel's trial begins May 5

Posted on Wildlandfire.com was this letter from the Forest Supervisor of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest about the upcoming trial:

Okanogan-Wenatchee Employees:

The trial of our employee Ellreese Daniels is scheduled to begin May 5. He was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of making false statements based on actions in his role as crew boss during the Thirtymile tragedy in 2001. I struggle with the reality of criminal charges against one of our own employees. I was not here in 2001, but today I feel the anxiety and fears of the firefighting community. I am also deeply saddened at the loss families experienced. Yet, in the midst of this swirl of strong emotion, we must go on.

I intend to support Ellreese by ensuring I do not interfere with a fair and speedy trial. All we can do for the families, employees and the American public is cooperate with the defense and prosecution by providing knowledgeable witnesses to testify honestly and truthfully. Then, let the justice system work based on the facts of the case. In the end, the judge and jury will decide the outcome of the trial.

This case will likely generate national media interest. If you want to speak with the media, then it is critical that you emphasize to them that you are speaking for yourself, as an individual, on you own time, not for the Forest Service or in any official capacity. It is your choice as an individual, representing your personal views to speak to a reporter. I offer this thought though. Ask yourself, “How will my comments influence the ability of the court to provide a fair and speedy trial”? If you are asked to comment as a Forest Service employee, please refer that request to Glen Sachet (503-808-2790) in the Regional Office.

Some of you will testify as witnesses for the defense or prosecution, or you will know someone who is testifying. The emotions of the tragedy may return. Don’t hesitate to talk with your line or staff officer, union representative, or contact the Employee Assistance Program for help.

I plan on attending as much of the trial as possible. When I’m not there, my representative will be. I will wear my uniform proudly in support of all employees and the Agency. I have identified a few employees that will serve a variety of roles in an official capacity at the trial, including keeping you informed of the proceedings. Others interested in attending can do so on their own time, not in an official capacity, with the use of leave pre-approved by their supervisor.

Maureen Hanson, Bobbie Scopa and I will be holding meetings at HQ and the Districts next week to discuss the upcoming trial and answer employee questions.

Finally, this has been and will continue to be a very emotional time. Please be sensitive and understanding of the feelings of others around you, and take extra care of yourselves.

Sincerely,

Becki