The criminal investigation into the Flint, Michigan water crisis has produced the most serious charges yet, involving the highest ranking member of the state government so far. Yesterday, the Michigan Attorney General charged five officials, including the head of the state's health department, with involuntary manslaughter. Attorney General Bill Shooty said Nick Lyon, director of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services, failed to alert the public about an outbreak
of Legionnaire's disease in the Flint area. Mr Lyon failed and his responsibilities to protect the health and safety of citizens of Flint. Twelve people died from Legionnaire's disease. Joining me is Peter Henning, a professor at Wayne State University Law School. Peter, how unusual is it to have state officials charged with involuntary manslaughter in a situation like the Flint water crisis. Well, this is certainly unusual, although, of course the whole Flint water crisis itself is an unusual,
if not unique situation. Um. You know, we we have seen um charges like this, manslaughter charges in workplace situations where you may have a dangerous facility. But here you have a government official whose obligation is to protect the public health being accused of causing a death because he didn't fulfill his duty and failed to warn. So this is certainly a rare case. It may actually be unique, and there are a lot of challenges in the case.
Let's talk about some of the challenges. How difficult will it be to prove the elements? Well, the key issue in this case, I think it's going to be causation, and it's going to be tracing um first that the Legionella bacteria ish was from the contaminated flint water and didn't come from another source. And then you have another causation issue, which is that the failure to warn by Mr Lyon and the other officials who were charged um
that that was a cause of the death. Now it doesn't have to be the the only cause, but it does have to be a cause of the death of this particular victim, Mr Skidmore, the five year old man from uh the Flint area. And those are going to be too causation challenges, and so I expect this case will really become almost a battle of the experts, with each side putting on its experts saying that this is what caused his death and the defense experts saying no,
it didn't. So it's going to be an uphill battle for the Attorney General's office. Oh, I I think it will be that this is going to be a case in which the jury is going to be asked to connect up a lot of different dots and to find the proper chain of causation. And of course the advantage the defendants will have is that the government has to prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt. So if they can so some doubt in the minds of the jurors on the causation issue, then that could be enough for
a not guilty verdict. So, uh, this is not going to be an easy case for the Attorney General. There have been calls to charge the governor and shooting hasn't ruled that out. Didn't rule that out yesterday. What kind of evidence would you need to link someone at the very top of the government. Well, I certainly think that
would be an even more difficult case. Mr Lyon was the director of the Department of Health and Human Services, and I expect that the Attorney General will Attorney General will be able to show that he had notice of the legionnaire's disease outbreak, whether that information got to the Governor's office even and then got to the governor himself.
You know that we're talking about someone who is uh not dealing with the day to day issues and the minutia of how government is going to act, and so it would be difficult absently someone who can point the finger at Governor Snyder and say, well, yes, he knew this, um this is That may be the great divide here in putting the knowledge in Governor Snyder's mind. And then, of course you also have to prove if we're talking
about a manslaughter charge again, the causation. Now this the Governor has expressed support for Nickline and Dr Eden Wells, and they will remain on duty at the Department of Health and Human Services. Of course they're presumed innocent. But is it normal to leave people who are being being
investigated and who are charged in their positions. That's a very good question, because you know, we're used to seeing companies putting someone on leave or even firing them, and and government's too when one of their officials is accused of a crime. Although it's not a requirement at all,
and Governor Snyder is a lame duck governor. He's going out of office next year and has always um fashioned his image as an outsider, and so it may well be that his view is that these two officials are being treated unfairly by the Attorney General's office and the special prosecutor at the Attorney General appointed, and that he's
going to stand by them. It's certainly uncommon. They'll there will be political heat on him, but I don't know if there will be political consequences for Governor Snyder because I'm not sure what those consequences would be about thirty seconds, Peter, what how long before this actually goes to trial? Uh? Well, first there will have to be a preliminary examination, which could be months away, and then the trial I would
expect would again be months away. That this is working its way through the system, I doubt we'll see a trial on these charges in perhaps always a pleasure to have you on Bloomberg Law. That's Professor Peter Henning of Wayne State University Law School coming up on Bloomberg Law. I'm going to be talking more about the water crisis in Flint and the causes of it. I'm June Grosso. You're listening to Bloomberg Law. This is Bloomberg