The federal manslaughter trial over the 2022 Marathon parasailing accident that killed one woman ended in a mistrial Monday after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
After just over two days of deliberation, Judge Jose E. Martinez dismissed a hung jury in the trial of Daniel Couch, the Middle Keys captain behind the wheel of Lighthouse Parasail’s M/V Airborne when a gust of wind caught the parasail and its passengers: 33-year-old Supraja Alaparthi, her then-10-year-old son and 7-year-old nephew.
With the “pegged” parasail beginning to drag the boat, which had 13 passengers aboard, Couch cut the tow line. According to motions filed this spring by federal public defender Ian McDonald, he and mate Tanner Helmers made several rescue attempts before the three passengers and the still-inflated parasail collided with the Old Seven Mile Bridge.
Marathon captain John Callion responded as a Good Samaritan in the area, cutting the three victims free from their harnesses and taking them to shore, where Supraja was pronounced dead.
Beginning July 27, jurors heard four days of arguments from prosecutors led by assistant U.S. Attorney Breezye Telfair and Couch’s defense team, led by McDonald, on charges of seaman’s manslaughter and a new voluntary manslaughter charge, added in a superseding indictment just two weeks before Couch’s trial was originally set to begin in April.
The sides debated critical aspects of the case, from whether a “chute wrangler” safety device was properly installed in the parasail to whether the M/V Airborne’s crew had properly monitored the weather and the technical nature of the sudden gust that led to the fatal collision.
Beginning deliberations late on July 30, the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on any count after Martinez issued an Allen charge – an instruction urging a deadlocked jury to continue deliberations and attempt to come to a consensus.
“We have a juror that is drawing a conclusion based on assertions not included in evidence and isn’t willing to further deliberate,” stated one note from the jury foreperson to Martinez. “How should we proceed?”
“A fellow juror stated, during deliberation, that they would not come to a verdict on one count of the indictment because they were concerned about the punishment,” another note read. “This was an instruction we were told to disregard by Your Honor.”
On Monday, the judge declared a mistrial, dismissing the jury.
“When this accident happened four years ago, almost no one in the Keys, except those who actually knew Dan and the kind of captain he was, thought it possible that he would not be found guilty of even simple negligence,” McDonald told the Weekly after Martinez declared the mistrial. “But that is exactly what happened after a nearly week-long trial and days of jury deliberations.
“We have said it all along, and the evidence at trial bore it out: don’t always believe everything you hear. … What happened on May 30, 2022 was a tragedy. There can be absolutely no dispute about that. But it was a tragic accident, not a crime.”
Other civil suits and a state manslaughter charge in the case are pending. Federal prosecutors may choose to retry the case because a mistrial does not bar another prosecution under double jeopardy protections.
