Jury Selection Underway In San Bruno PG&E Pipeline Safety, Obstruction Trial

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jury selection began in federal court in San Francisco Tuesday but did not near completion in the criminal obstruction-of-justice and pipeline-safety-violation trial of PG&E Co.

The trial in the court of U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson is expected to last six to eight weeks.

The San Francisco-based utility faces 13 charges. 

One is obstructing justice in a National Transportation Safety Board probe of the fatal explosion of a high-pressure natural gas transmission pipeline in San Bruno in 2010.

Eight people died, 66 were injured, and dozens of houses were destroyed and damaged in the explosion and ensuing fire on Sept. 9, 2010.

The NTSB concluded the cause was a defective seam weld in a pipeline segment that was incorrectly listed in PG&E records as seamless. The segment was part of Line 132, which runs from Milpitas to San Francisco through San Bruno. 

The other 12 counts are charges of violations of record-keeping and pipeline-maintenance requirements of the U.S. Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act for several Peninsula and East Bay pipelines, including Line 132. If convicted of all charges, PG&E could be fined up to $562 million.

"We believe PG&E is guilty of a dereliction of its duty to protect the citizens of San Bruno and the citizens of California," San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane said in a statement.

"We hope this trial against PG&E will bring justice and transparency, which the utility has not achieved on its own," he said.

PG&E stated, "Regardless of the next legal steps, we want our customers to know we are focused on the future and on re-earning their trust by leading in safety, reliability, affordability and clean energy. 

"We've made unprecedented progress and we're committed to maintaining this focus," the company said. 

The jury selection began Tuesday with a pool of 96 potential jurors. 

Of those, 82 said on a written questionnaire that they had heard of the San Bruno explosion and 41 of those said they had negative or extremely negative views of PG&E.

PG&E's defense attorneys asked Henderson to dismiss all 41, but the judge excused only four and said he wanted to question others in more detail. He also dismissed about 10 pool members for hardship reasons.

The judge sent the remaining jury candidates home at about 2:30 p.m. and told them to return Wednesday morning for further selection.

Although the federal investigation stemmed from allegations of record-keeping deficiencies in the wake of the San Bruno explosion, the only count in the 2014 grand jury indictment of PG&E that explicitly mentions the blast is the obstruction-of-justice charge.

In several pretrial motions, PG&E attorneys strenuously urged Henderson to bar or limit evidence about the explosion, arguing that it could be "highly prejudicial" to a jury.

The utility's most recent motion, filed on the eve of trial on Monday, asked the judge either to further restrict testimony about San Bruno or to move the obstruction-of-justice charge to a separate trial.

"There is a significant risk the jury will be misled into believing that this case is about the terrible accident.....That is not what
this case is about," PG&E attorneys wrote in their filing on Monday. They said the case is about allegations of regulatory violations.

Henderson denied the motion for a separate trial in a ruling from the bench Tuesday morning, according to U.S. attorney's office spokesman Abraham Simmons.

In earlier decisions, Henderson took the middle ground on San Bruno evidence. He said prosecutors can't argue that safety-law violations caused the explosion because that allegation is not part of the obstruction charge.

He barred federal attorneys from showing videos of the flames and the victims, playing panicked 911 calls, presenting testimony about the number of deaths or showing jurors a section of the ruptured pipe. 

Prosecutors had proposed to display the 28-foot-long, 30-inch-diameter pipe segment to jurors on a flatbed truck outside the
Federal Building courthouse in the Civic Center.

But Henderson also wrote in an April ruling, "The San Bruno explosion is unquestionably relevant to all thirteen counts that remain to be tried in this case."

He said prosecutors could present evidence about the facts of the deadly explosion, show a map of destroyed and damaged houses, and present certain witnesses from the NTSB and other government agencies.

At the close of Tuesday's court session, Henderson ordered the jury candidates not to do any independent research on the case in newspapers or on the Internet, saying that the jury must rule solely on the evidence presented in court. 

"I've made some very careful and hard decisions about what will be admissible in court," he told the jury pool.

Previous coverage:

• Judge Dismisses Some Safety-Related Charges Against PG&E
• Federal Judge Slashes Maximum Penalty for PG&E in San Bruno Blast
• CPUC Commissioner Recuses Himself From PG&E Hearings, San Bruno Calls For Resignation
• PG&E Admits Liability for San Bruno Pipeline Blast

--Bay City News/Patch file photo