Bail Cut to $25,000, Fired Exxon Valdez Captain Leaves Jail

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. —  The fired captain of the Exxon Valdez walked out of jail today after a judge reduced his bail from $1 million to $25,000, calling the higher amount “unconstitutionally excessive.”

Capt. Joseph Hazelwood posted bail, walked out of the Suffolk County Jail at 12:59 p.m. and got into a waiting car with attorney Thomas Russo and another lawyer. He did not speak and showed no emotion as he walked off.

On Wednesday, another judge set bail for Hazelwood at $1 million bond or $500,000 cash, comparing the effect of the oil tanker grounding in Alaska to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Justice Thomas Stark, the supervising judge of Suffolk County Criminal Court, today reduced the bail to $25,000 bond or cash.

“The amount of bail is not commensurate with the seriousness of the crime or the effect of the crime on the community,” Stark said of the figure that had shocked even prosecutors.

Hazelwood, who faces three misdemeanor charges in Alaska, is accused of being drunk when he relinquished command of the Exxon Valdez to an uncertified seaman. The vessel then hit a reef March 24, gushing 10.1 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound and creating North America’s worst oil spill.

In Washington today, Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner told Congress that government and industry never had a contingency plan sufficient to handle an oil spill the size of the one caused by the Exxon Valdez.

He did not place the blame on anyone specifically, saying, “it is too early to have factually adequate evidence of culpability.”

“But my impression is that a somewhat over-optimistic attitude crept in about our readiness and ability to deal with a spill of this magnitude, or even that an accident of this size could occur,” he added.

Skinner told the Senate Commerce Committee that the Exxon Corp. did not have enough equipment on hand when the spill occurred.

“This was compounded by the remote location of the spill, but it goes without saying that every step of the planning for moving Alaskan oil by water had to assume a spill in just this locale,” Skinner said.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans called on President Bush to become directly involved in the cleanup efforts.

Rep. H. James Saxton of New Jersey told a news conference called by the House Republican Research Committee that the President should immediately put one of the federal agencies in charge of coordinating the cleanup.

The Republican group also called for legislation that would outline strict contingency plans for future oil spills and place the financial responsibility on the corporation responsible for the accident.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard investigators were reportedly investigating a theory that the captain of the ship may have put the vessel on automatic pilot prior to tha accident before retiring to his cabin. Then, so the theory goes, the unauthorized third mate left in charge of the ship realized too late that the vessel was off course and was unable to steer it away from the reef because he may not have known that the tanker autopilot was on until it was too late.