Ex-BP engineer deserves new Gulf spill trial: U.S. appeals court

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agreed with a lower court judge's decision last June to throw out the defendant Kurt Mix's December 2013 conviction. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval acted after learning that the jury forewoman admitted to having heard in a courthouse elevator that other BP employees were being prosecuted over the spill, and told her deadlocked fellow jurors that this made her more confident that Mix was guilty. Tuesday's decision is a setback for the U.S. Department of Justice's effort to hold individuals criminally liable for the April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and its aftermath.

Ex-BP engineer deserves new Gulf spill trial: U.S. appeals court source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-bp-engineer-deserves-gulf-201844459.html