Trial opens for ex-BP engineer charged with deleting messages about Gulf spill response

Minneapolis Star-Tribune ^ | December 2, 2013 | By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

[Brad from Tennessee]

NEW ORLEANS--(AP)--Jury selection began Monday for the Justice Department's case against a former BP drilling engineer charged with deleting text messages and voicemails about the company's response to its massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dozens of potential jurors filled a New Orleans courtroom for the start of Kurt Mix's federal trial, which is expected to last up to three weeks. Attorneys could give their opening statements as early as Tuesday.

One by one, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. questioned members of the jury pool privately for several hours. He dismissed some of them and ordered the rest to return Tuesday for a second day of jury selection.

Mix, 52, of Katy, Texas, was indicted last year on two counts of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors claim he deliberately deleted strings of text messages to and from a supervisor and a BP PLC contractor to hamper a grand jury's investigation of the spill.

Mix is one of four current or former BP employees charged with crimes related to the nation's worst offshore oil spill. His case is the first to be tried.

The charges against Mix aren't related to any of the events leading up the April 2010 blowout of BP's Macondo well, which triggered an explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig. . .

[Paladin2]

e-mails aren’t backed up?

[driftdiver]

The nsa has em

[stinkerpot65]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2013/09/24/prosecutors-gone-wild-in-case-of-fmr-bp-engineer-kurt-mix/

Typical corrupt Federal show trial.

[a fool in paradise]

How many times have Obama administration figures lied to Congress now regarding Fast & Furious, the IRS partisan witchhunt of Tea Party groups, the Benghazi attacks, etc. etc.?

Some crimes are apparently more showtrial worthy than others.

[smokingfrog]

The government is not even planning on calling either the CONTRACTOR or the SUPERVISOR, the text message recipients, to testify in the trial that is scheduled to begin on December 2. Regarding the alleged deleted voicemails, most were from friends and family but one was from the SUPERVISOR (12 seconds – not recovered), one rerouted from BP’s switchboard (16 seconds – not recovered) and the last to the CONTRACTOR related to making copies of a project book at Kinkos (copies of which the government has). All three voicemails occurred over a year after the spill had stopped.

[Cyman]

I rarely get surprised by anything this government does but this is an amazing story not just about prosecutorial overreach but frank organized criminal activity.

[kcvl]

November when it was discovered that the text messages in question contained innocuous messages about things such as lunch plans and yoga lessons … not oil spill calculations. During that hearing, U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr. noted that the messages did not represent, “an overwhelmingly strong indictment.” Prosecutors said that the messages, particularly those related to lunch plans, could be ‘nuances’ about something more sinister.