Prosecutors face tough choices in NYC derailment

While the city’s Metro-North Railroad is already getting hit with multimillion-dollar civil claims over a deadly commuter train derailment, prosecutors will face tough choices when deciding whether to bring criminal charges against the train’s engineer, who told investigators he nodded or fell into a daze at the controls.

Legal experts say drowsy driving isn’t necessarily a crime, and it can be tough to prosecute drivers who nod off unless there are extra factors at play, such as drug use or brazen disregard for passenger safety. The prosecutor’s office investigating the engineer recently failed to convict a bus driver of manslaughter in a 2011 crash that killed more than a dozen passengers, in part because his drowsiness wasn’t accompanied by any such factors.

“There’s a sentiment that when something terrible happens, you have to hold someone accountable criminally — that’s not always the case,” said attorney Andrew Abramson, who represented a Staten Island Ferry pilot sentenced to 18 months in prison after a deadly wreck in 2003. “Sometimes there is a tragedy, and it’s really a matter for the civil courts.”

Federal and city investigators are gathering information about Sunday’s train accident, which killed four people and injured more than 60, and likely will spend months analyzing the conduct of engineer William Rockefeller.

National Transportation Safety Board officials have said the train derailed in the Bronx after hitting a curve at 82 mph — far faster than the 30 mph speed limit.

The accident happened at 7:20 a.m. Rockefeller’s lawyer said the engineer had gotten up at 3:30 a.m. for his 5 a.m. shift after going to bed at 8:30 the previous night.

Rockefeller passed a blood-alcohol level breath test, officials said. His lawyer and union chief said he hadn’t been using drugs or doing anything else reckless, such as using a phone while at the controls.

The NTSB is trying to build a timeline of what Rockefeller was doing in the 72 hours leading up to the accident, in part to determine whether he might have been sleep-deprived or suffering from an undisclosed health condition.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, who would handle any prosecution, has declined to comment publicly on the case and hasn’t given a timeline on a decision about criminal charges. In past cases, prosecutors have commonly waited until the conclusion of the federal investigation to convene a grand jury.

Williams’ lawyer, Patrick Bruno, said the legal standard for the lowest possible criminal charge against Rockefeller, negligent homicide, might be tough to meet if the engineer really did get a full night’s sleep and did everything else he was supposed to do to keep passengers safe.

“The standard is: Are you being so darn negligent and indifferent you should also be punished criminally?” Bruno said Thursday. “They might have a situation where they have four dead people, this guy did something stupid, but they don’t know if they can prove a case.”

As for civil litigation, lawyers said Metro-North and its parent, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, may have a hard time avoiding millions of dollars in damages over the injuries and deaths.