After securing guilty pleas and a record fine from Curtis Bay Energy and one of its top officials for environmental violations at the South Baltimore medical waste incinerator, Maryland prosecutors failed to make their case against a former plant manager.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge found the plant manager, Thomas Keefer, not guilty last week on all counts.

Attorney General Anthony Brown and Maryland environmental regulators assembled in October 2023 outside Curtis Bay Energy in South Baltimore’s Hawkins Point to announce the guilty pleas by the company and its former director of operations, Kenneth T. Jackson, for 40 counts of violating state environmental laws.

They also assessed a $1.75 million fine against Curtis Bay Energy, which was among the largest ever for an environmental crime, Brown’s office said at the time. The company and Jackson pleaded guilty to a slew of charges, including that they had cut corners during incineration and shipped unburned, “raw” medical waste to a Virginia landfill.

Maryland attorneys also charged Keefer with three counts of violating environmental laws, but he opted not to take a plea deal and instead fight his charges in court.

In an early April trial, prosecutors argued that Keefer was responsible for shuttling medical waste through Curtis Bay Energy’s incinerator too quickly, leaving unburned and partially burned biohazardous waste among the facility’s ash. The state also tried to pin Keefer with responsibility for discharging wastewater through a un-permitted pipe feeding through a fence onto a neighboring state-owned property.

On Thursday, Judge Jeannie J. Hong found the state failed to produce evidence proving Keefer committed these violations himself or directly ordered other employees to perform them.

In a 31-page opinion explaining her decision, Hong summarized testimony from numerous former Curtis Bay Energy employees who recounted Keefer‘s knowledge of unburned medical waste and the illegal discharge pipe. But Hong said there wasn’t enough evidence to show Keefer was responsible for the pipe, which the company tried to hide from inspectors. And on two specific dates in question, she said the evidence didn’t show that Keefer had directed staff to haul raw medical waste to a Virginia landfill.

“I can see why the corporation and Ken Jackson pled guilty,” the judge said. “This is just a little more challenging for the court.”

Keefer‘s attorney Michael Tomko said in a statement that the case was won on cross examination, where the defense drew out evidence from state investigators and former Curtis Bay Energy employees showing Keefer had neither established the un-permitted discharge outlet nor ordered the partially burned medical waste loaded into trailers.

“What became readily apparent, during the two day trial, was that the workers at CBE had a great relationship with Keefer, whose door was always open,” Tomko said in a statement.

Keefer was promoted after the termination of Jackson, the director of plant operations, and Tomko said a state inspector who was called to the witness stand disclosed that her inspections found full compliance once Keefer took over.

A spokesperson for the Maryland Attorney General’s Office touted the state’s other wins over Curtis Bay Energy, including securing $750,000 for environmental work in South Baltimore and $1 million for the Maryland Clean Water Fund.

“Our cases against Curtis Bay Energy and associated defendants were not just an effort to hold those accountable for risking Marylanders’ health,” Aleithea Warmack said in a statement. “These victories helped us attain environmental justice for Maryland.”

As part of the plea agreement, reached in May 2023, Jackson was ordered to pay $30,000 in fines and faced three years of supervised probation. A two-year prison sentence was suspended.

Tomko also pointed to a video entered by the Attorney General’s Office as evidence against Keefer, which he called the state’s “so-called smoking gun.” The video, taken by a state inspector, depicts a Curtis Bay Energy employee removing a hose the company had hooked up to feed wastewater through the un-permitted pipe and off the property.

The earlier plea agreements identify the man in the video as Keefer, but Tomko said it wasn’t until recently that state investigators realized through an interview that the video showed a different employee.

“Throughout the years that it took for this case to reach terminus, Thomas Keefer maintained his innocence,” Tomko said.

The state’s investigation took place in late 2019 to early 2020, when Curtis Bay Energy was owned by the New York hedge fund Summer Street Capital Partners. Since then, Curtis Bay Energy was purchased by the California-based Aurora Capital Partners.

But even after the state reached its plea agreement with Curtis Bay Energy, South Baltimore community members and environmental advocates continued to report environmental violations to state regulators.

In March 2024, state attorneys and the Maryland Department of the Environment filed another lawsuit against Curtis Bay Energy, asking a judge to order repairs at the facility and to impose fines of up to $25,000 each day violations continued. That case is ongoing.

This article has been updated to correct the ownership of Curtis bay Energy.