Chemical safety updates: Daniel Powell charges dropped, David Snyder ordered to pay restitution

From C&EN's Jyllian Kemsley, a couple of items of interest. First, the story of Daniel Powell, the Colorado teacher charged with assault after injuring a student during a methanol/flame demonstration. The charges have been dropped: 

Last fall, a Denver teacher, Daniel Powell, was charged with four counts of misdemeanor assault after a classroom fire seriously burned a student. Powell had lit a small pool of methanol to demonstrate its flame properties, then tried to add more methanol from a 4 L container, Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board investigators said in September. The fire flashed back into the container, then jetted out to hit the student in the chest. Other students sitting nearby were also injured. 

The charges against Powell have been dropped, says Lynn Kimbrough, communications director for the Denver District Attorney‘s Office. “As the case moved forward, further review of the facts led the prosecutor to the conclusion that we did not a reasonable likelihood of conviction – and once that conclusion was reached we had an ethical obligation to dismiss the case,” Kimbrough says...

If the CSB account is indeed accurate, then this at least the fourth incident (the Calais Weber case, the Alonzo Yanes case (pdf), the Reno case) where it was the decision of the demonstrator to:

• add methanol 
• from a larger container 
• to an already lit flame

that caused the injuries. Not especially surprising, but still worth noting. 

It is interesting to see that the charges were dropped - I wonder why? 

Also from Jyllian Kemsley, the David Snyder case (where a Ph.D. synthetic chemist was synthesizing explosives in his apartment and then injured himself) has concluded with restitution payments to the apartment owners: 

Former University of California, Davis, chemist David S. Snyder must pay nearly $100,000 in restitution to the university and a property management company as a result of a 2013 incident in his campus apartment. 

The restitution deal concludes legal proceedings against Snyder that involved 17 felony charges, including possession of explosives and firearms and reckless disposal of hazardous waste. He pleaded no contest to the charges last year and was sentenced to two years and two months in county jail plus two years and two months out of jail under supervision by the county probation department....

I still don't know what he was doing. Not buying his lawyer's story about removing nitrates from water. 

I still don't know what David Snyder was doing

Does anyone remember the David Snyder case? He's the synthetic chemistry postdoc who has been charged with a variety of counts for experimenting with explosives in his Davis, CA apartment. He was discovered after he showed up at a Davis ER with an injury to his hand.

Jyllian Kemsley covered* Dr. Snyder's preliminary hearing** on Friday; the writeup is at The Safety Zone. As usual when Jyllian is involved, it is detailed, well written and very interesting. I'll try to summarize the highlights of the prosecution's case:

• Graduate students noted that Dr. Snyder was interested in explosives (specifically, making triacetone triperoxide), setting off fireworks in his hood and collecting used chemicals. 
• After Snyder's injury, he was heard asking his friend to dispose of some of the chemicals in his apartment. 
• His apartment had a raft of evidence showing that he was doing explosives-oriented experimentation at home. 

At this point, it is still unclear to me as to what Snyder's motives were, other than that he enjoyed experimenting with explosives at home. I am very curious to know what scale he was preparing these explosive compounds on. (I presume that, if there was evidence of intent to deploy said explosives, we would have heard about it.)

I think some of his behavior in graduate school was certainly unusual, but does not really amount to a crime. However***, but it is clear to me that his request for someone else to remove evidence from the scene (and to do so in an illegal manner, with respect to hazardous waste disposal) is indeed a crime and enough to get some sort of a guilty plea from him.

(I assume, also, that he has experimented his way out of a chemistry lab. No industrial or academic employer would decide to take such an employee on.)

What bothers me most about this case is the potential threat it poses to the home experimental scientist. Law-abiding citizens who want to do a little science (and God forbid, some chemistry) at home have some difficult barriers to cross. David Snyder hasn't made it any easier on them.

UPDATE: Jyllian Kemsley mentions Beth Halford's very relevant article on home chemists and the legal troubles they can face; I admit it was this article that I was not remembering, yet thinking about when I wrote my last paragraph. Thanks, Jyllian!

* Covering the court proceedings of chemists must be the rarest of #altchemjobs. 
** A preliminary hearing is used to determine if the prosecution has enough evidence to proceed. 
*** I am not a lawyer. 

David Snyder arraigned

The latest on Dr. David Snyder, the UC Davis postdoc who was apparently experimenting with explosives in his campus apartment from Jyllian Kemsley at The Safety Zone:

UC Davis chemist David Snyder was arraigned this afternoon on three counts of reckless disposal of hazardous waste, three counts of possession of a destructive device or explosive, one count of possession of materials with intent to make a destructive device, and two counts of possessing or bringing a firearm onto campus. All ten counts are felonies.

Dr. Kemsley notes the AP's report, where they talk to Dr. Snyder's attorney:

Snyder's defense attorney, Linda Parisi, said her client had the materials for research. "What happened in Dr. Snyder's apartment was an accident. He harbored no intent to build or detonate an explosive device," she said. "He is a chemist working on a variety of projects."

I would really like to know a couple of things:

• What were the destructive devices that the Yolo County DA are charging Dr. Snyder with possessing? (I am fully prepared for them to be potentially underwhelming.) 
• What is "the variety of projects" that Dr. Snyder was working on, and why couldn't he have done them in his laboratory? 

This case confuses me; I await more data.