The Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 eleven workers.

And when you cause people to die, you get charged with manslaughter. Right? Not so much with corporations. Here we go again: Yes, they're legally considered people with all of the benefits and none of the problems but federal officials are looking into manslaughter charges for BP managers who presided over the Deepwater Horizon well.

According to anonymous sources, top executives may be held responsible, charged with either involuntary manslaughter or “seaman’s manslaughter” - meaning a steeper penalty and the enitre case would depend on proving that BP managers deliberately sacrificed safety in favor of speed and cost.

The Atlantic Wire reports the oddness of the prosescution:  "They typically don’t prosecute employees of large corporations,” Jane Barrett, a Maryland law professor and former prosecutor for environmental crime, tells the news service. She adds: "You’ve got to prosecute the individuals in order to maximize, and not lose, the deterrent effect." Another law professor cited the fact that "low-level people in these companies [were] responsible for making bad decisions," making it hard to try them because "it’s not clear they all knew what everyone else involved knew."

The environmental violations were clear but we now know there were 11 choices made in the completion of the well that both saved time and increased risks- seven were made by BP managers on shore.

The decisions included moving ahead with operations without the recommended equipment, failing to run a test to ensure the well’s stability, and misreading the results of other tests.

Decisions such as moving ahead with operations without the recommended equipment, failing to run a test to ensure the well’s stability, and misreading the results of other tests. From Bloomberg:

In the days leading up to the disaster, BP officials were warned by Halliburton Co. (HAL), the Houston-based company it hired to seal the well with cement, that their design might allow the oil and natural gas to leak to the surface.

Halliburton recommended BP use 21 centralizers that help ensure cement is evenly distributed in the well and seals it. BP had only six centralizers on Deepwater Horizon, according to internal e-mails released by investigators. BP officials decided to go ahead rather than wait for the additional 15.

They also decided to skip a test that would determine if the cement was stable, according to testimony at Coast Guard hearings. Then, on April 20, BP and Transocean managers on the rig misread the results of another test to determine whether the well’s cement seal was strong enough to hold the oil and natural gas beneath the ocean floor, according to the president’s commission.

In the end, the companies went ahead and removed the drilling mud from the well, which took 2,600 pounds of weight from atop the oil and gas reservoir. Within hours, natural gas reached the Deepwater Horizon and touched off the catastrophic explosion.

I'll keep you posted as this story develops.

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