A former high-ranking BP executive, David I. Rainey, has been acquitted of charges relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.
On Friday, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana dismissed charges that Rainey, formerly BP's vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, had made false statements to the FBI about the rate of oil gushing from the well into the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier in the week, US District Judge Kurt Englehardt threw out the obstruction of Congress charge.
According to one of the lawfirms representing Rainey, Steptoe & Johnson, the obstruction of Congress count was thrown out due to three members of Congress and six staffers subpoenaed by Rainey sought to be kept from having to testify, citing the speech or debate clause in the US Constitution.
Steptoe’s Brian Heberlig and Reid Weingarten, who served as lead defense counsel, stated: "We are extremely grateful for the jury's verdict. Dave Rainey is an innocent man who was wrongly accused. The system got it right today."
Another co-counselor, Mike Magner, of Jones Walker LLP, said: “I have never represented a more honorable and upright man who was more unfairly accused. Not only did the jury acquit him in record time, but the judge agreed that it was the proper verdict.”
Rainey, who also served as Deputy Incident Commander and second-highest ranking representative at Unified Command during the company's spill response efforts, was indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern district of Louisiana in November 2012.
A trial is still pending for two other former BP employees facing charges related to Deepwater Horizon. Robert M. Kaluza, of Henderson, Nevada, and Donald J. Vidrine, of Lafayette, Louisiana, – both of whom were the highest-ranking BP supervisors onboard at the time of the accident – were are alleged to have engaged in negligent and grossly negligent conduct in a 23-count indictment charging violations of the federal involuntary manslaughter and seaman's manslaughter statutes and the Clean Water Act, the US Department of Justice said in 2012, when the charges were announced.
If convicted, both Kaluza and Vidrine face a maximum 10 years in prison on each count of seaman's manslaughter, up to eight years on each involuntary manslaughter count and up to one year in prison on the Clean Water Act count.
This year marked the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon accident. On 20 April 2010, 11 lives were lost when BP’s Macondo well blewout, spilling 4.9 MMbbl of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before the well could be successfully capped on 15 July 2010.
Last month, both Halliburton and Transocean reached settlement agreements with BP over the spill.
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