A former engineer with the oil energy company BP is set for a change-of-plea hearing in a long-running federal case related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
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Kurt Mix had been fighting an obstruction charge for more than three years.
Mix pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of deleting a single text message conversation with a close personal friend who was also a coworker.
He will avoid prison time and was sentenced to six months of probation, the AP said.
Kurt Mix, who had been tasked by BP to analyze the flow rate of oil gushing from its blown-out Macondo well, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval in New Orleans. The texts nearly entirely personal in nature and did not include anything important about the oil spill.
“Mr. Rainey and Kurt Mix together stand vindicated of any charge that either ever acted to obstruct justice”, McPhee said, “so that is something that both Mr. Rainey and Mr. Mix have been able to fully put behind them with the outcomes in these cases”. He was found guilty in a 2013 trial, but the conviction was overturned.
The blast killed 11 workers and it took 87 days to plug the well that was 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea level and 80 kilometers (50 miles) offshore from New Orleans.
Today’s announcement was the culmination of a lengthy investigation and prosecution initiated by the Justice Department in the summer of 2011.
U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment Friday, as did BP spokesman Geoff Morrell.
Outside the courthouse, Mix said he had done nothing wrong.
It was a setback for the Department of Justice’s effort to hold individuals criminally liable for the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and its aftermath. “I think it’s a reflection, as much as anything, that this man does not want himself and his family to have to go through another trial”. City marshals initially said they were trying to serve a warrant when Few fled down a one-way street, and officers fired when he tried to back his vehicle toward them.
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