Deepwater Horizon Trial of Former BP Engineer Postponed Until Summer
A federal judge has postponed the trial of a former BP engineer charged with deleting text messages about the company's response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Kurt Mix's trial was scheduled to start February 25th, but a U.S. District Judge has agreed to move it to June 10th after discussing the matter with defense attorneys and prosecutors. Both sides wanted more time to prepare.
Mix pleaded not guilty in May 2012 to two counts of obstruction of justice. His indictment accuses him of deleting text messages to a supervisor and a contractor to prevent them from being used in a federal grand jury probe. These criminal charges were the first in the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of the 2010 rig explosion that killed 11 workers and resulted in the nation's worst offshore oil spill.
According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Mix's indictment says he was told to retain all of his spill-related records, including text messages, but he allegedly deleted about 300 texts he sent to a supervisor who served as BP's drilling engineering manager for the Gulf and an outside contractor who also worked on the spill response.
Mix's attorneys argue that he did judiciously preserve records that a BP vendor gave to the Justice Department, providing prosecutors with evidence used to charge BP and another employee. Each count of obstruction of justice carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.