March 30, 2011 | Mark Paradies

Another Interesting Article About Criminal Charges for the Deepwater Horizon Accident

Would prosecutors use a 173-year-old-law designed to increase the alertness of steamboat captains to prosecute BP/Transocean and perhaps BP/Transocean executives? That’s the topic of this Houston Chronicle article. Read about it at:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7496812.html

What’s the potential sentence? Ten years in a federal prison and an unspecified fine. And according to the article, the requirements for proof are less than a normal manslaughter charge. All they have to show is simple negligence. The article quotes Gregory Linsin, a former prosecutor with the Department of Justice Environmental Crimes Division, a saying:

Simple negligence is a failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise under the circumstances.

We’ll see where this goes…

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