ELR Citation: ELR 20051
No(s). 89-5606 (4th Cir. Sep 4, 1990)

The court upholds the conviction of civilian engineers working for the U.S. Army for multiple violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act's (RCRA's) criminal provisions. The engineers were involved in the development of chemical warfare systems at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The court first holds that defendants, who claim immunity from the criminal provisions of RCRA because of their status as federal employees working at a federal facility, are not protected by sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity does not immunize individual governmental employees from prosecution for their criminal acts. The court next finds that because ignorance of the law is no defense in RCRA prosecutions, the government did not need to prove the defendants knew that violation of RCRA was a crime, nor that regulations existed listing and identifying the chemical wastes as RCRA hazardous wastes. However, the court holds that the district court erred in giving the jury an instruction requiring it to find that the defendants had to know the substances involved were chemicals, without indicating that they also had to know the chemicals were hazardous. But because the evidence overwhelmingly reflects that the defendants were aware that they were dealing with hazardous chemicals, the court holds that the error was harmless. The court holds that the evidence at trial supports the jury's verdict, which implicitly found that one chemical compound leaking at the site was a "characteristic" hazardous waste due to its flash point, even though it was not a listed hazardous waste under RCRA. The court also holds that negligent and inept storage of hazardous wastes is one of the evils that RCRA was designed to prevent, and that §3008(d) makes such egregious conduct a crime.