Costa Concordia captain sentenced to 16 years in prison

GROSSETO, Italy – A court convicted the Costa Concordia’s commander of the manslaughter deaths of 32 people in the cruise liner’s capsizing off the Italian coast and sentenced him Wednesday to some 16 years in prison, blaming him for causing the 2012 shipwreck and for doing what sea captains should never do – abandoning ship while passengers and crew were still aboard.

Francesco Schettino’s total prison term broke down this way: 10 years for the deaths of 32 passengers and crew members; five years for causing the shipwreck when he steered too close to Giglio Island, smashing into a rocky reef, one year for abandoning the luxury vessel when hundreds of people were still aboard, and one month for giving false information to maritime authorities about the gravity of the Concordia’s collision, which prosecutors said delayed the arrival of help.

The punishment, handed down by a three-judge panel, was 10 years short of what prosecutors had sought and left some survivors and victims’ relatives wondering if justice was done.

“Thirty-two dead. That’s about six months for every person who died,” Anne Decre, a Frenchwoman who managed to get aboard a lifeboat before the Concordia’s listing made it impossible to lower other lifeboats, said of the sentence. She was one of a handful of survivors who came to court to hear the verdict.

Schettino chose not to come to court for the verdict. Judge Giovanni Puliatti rejected the prosecutor’s request for the defendant’s immediate arrest. The judge noted that Schettino still had two levels of appeals to exhaust under Italian law before he must begin serving his sentence.