Was a Deletion of Text Messages Purely a Mistake?

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The 2010 release of huge quantities of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico made national and international headlines. The spill, on a BP owned oil rig in the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana and the attempts by the giant oil company to stem the flow of oil into the sea is still not only being discussed but the subject of a federal court hearing in New Orleans. Several BP employees are being tried as a result of the effects of the spill.

52 year old Kurt Mix is being tried for deleting phone messages which may have implicated a BP cover up over the amount of oil that was leaking from their Deep Horizon oil rig. A Federal jury has to decide whether the deletion of the messages was deliberate or a harmless mistake.

The prosecution alleges that Mix deliberately removed the messages during 2010 as they showed that the attempt to stem the oil leak – a method called “top kill” – was not working. The messages were being exchanged between Mix, an engineer working for BP and his supervisor, Jonathan Sprague, but were apparently deleted in October 2010, 5 months after the first oil started leaking out.

The first text messages indicated that over 630,000 gallons of crude were gushing out of the well on the first day of the spill, which was three times as much as the company was admitting to the public at the time. The amount of spill was also far more than could possibly be contained by the method that Mix and other engineers were using to fix the problem. Prosecutors argue that the deletion of the text messages removed crucial evidence that BP executives were aware of the magnitude of the spill at the time and lied about its potential impact.

The prosecution also alleges that Mix deleted more text messages and phone voice messages in 2011 between himself and a contractor about the spill that again may have revealed the true size of the problem. This deletion is alleged to have taken place not long after Federal authorities sub-poenaed BP for a copy of Mix’s correspondence.

Mix’s defense attorney says that the prosecution’s case showed incompetence and the claims that Mix was attempting to deliberately remove the messages was baseless. He says that Mix tried to remove some photographs on his iPhone and this is how the text messages inadvertently became deleted.

The attorney, Michael McGovern, said that the engineer was “brilliant” and “didn’t have a corrupt bone in his body”. McGovern said that Mix and other engineers worked extremely hard at the time of the spill in order to contain it. He also says that not one criticism of Mix’s character or work has been made.

McGovern also says that Mix still had ample evidence of the extent of the spill on his computer and email messages and investigators had access to this but “chose to ignore it”.

Mix is being tried with two counts of obstruction of justice. He is the first of four employees of BP to go to trial with the possibility of a 20 year jail sentence and a $250,000 fine on each count if he is found guilty.

Three other BP employees are being tried on criminal charges resulting from the oil spill. Two were in charge of the Deep Horizon well and are being tried for the manslaughter of the 11 rig workers who died during the initial blast. They have pleaded not guilty to the charge. The BP Chief Executive, David Rainey, is being tried for obstruction of justice relating to allegedly misinforming Congress about the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf.