POCATELLO — Industrialist Allan Elias has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for knowingly endangering an employee's life.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill's sentence, which included a ruling that Elias pay $5.9 million in restitution, followed a plea from the victim's brother.
Anthony Dominguez told Winmill that Elias, his brother's former boss, was evil.
Dominguez testified that he has seen his brother, Scott, go from an active young man to a 23-year-old with brain damage after being ordered by Elias to clean a tank containing phosphoric acid and cyanide.
"Mr. Elias, you're a man my brother trusted and you took that away from him," he said. "You took it away and you showed no remorse and for this your choices will haunt you the rest of your life."
The sentence last month was the harshest ever imposed for an environmental crime in the United States, eclipsing the 13-year prison term ordered last year in a Florida case.
"The sentence adequately reflects the danger Mr. Elias posed to the community and one individual in particular," Winmill said after the day-long hearing. "I hope it will deter Elias and other similarly situated individuals in the future."
The 61-year-old former owner of Evergreen Resources Inc. in southeastern Idaho remains the only employer ever convicted on federal charges of knowingly exposing a worker to hazardous waste.
Elias was convicted in May 1999 of ordering Scott Dominguez to wash down the sides of the 11-foot-high, 36-foot-long, 25,000-gallon tank containing the phosphoric acid and cyanide, a combination that produces the same gas the Nazis used in their World War II death camps.
Elias was handcuffed and immediately led away by federal marshals. He had been free on bond under electronic monitoring.
Dominguez, 23, collapsed in the tank in August 1996 and could not be rescued for an hour. He suffered severe brain damage and requires extensive care. Elias had provided no safety training and did not give Dominguez or other workers the required protective clothing or breathing gear.
His father, Ron Hamp, called Elias a "very, very evil man."
"You've destroyed Scott's life," Hamp said.
A trial is set for Nov. 6 in state court on a civil lawsuit filed by Dominguez and his mother, Jackie Hamp, against Elias, the company he ran, Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. and Kerr-McGee Chemical LLC, to which Elias sold Evergreen Resources in March 1995 for $1.5 million and a $40,000-a-month payment.
Dominguez's lawyer, Brent Roche, said the case could be the first in Idaho to result in an employer being found liable for an employee's injuries. Worker's compensation coverage in all other cases has foreclosed legal remedies.
"No sentence can ever restore what Scott and his family have lost," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Derden, chief of the criminal division. "But I hope they'll take some comfort in knowing that Mr. Elias will pay dearly for his crimes and that others may be protected from a similar fate by the court's action."
After declining to testify during his 3 1/2-week trial a year ago, Elias spent more than two hours on the stand during sentencing, repeatedly maintaining that Dominguez was the victim of a tragic accident that he bore no responsibility for.
He was specifically convicted of knowingly endangering the safety and health of his employees, illegally disposing of hazardous cyanide waste and making a false statement to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
A native of Long Island and a graduate of the Wharton School, Elias had such a long history of environmental and worker safety violations that federal and state regulators sometimes called him "Idaho's walking, talking Three Mile Island."