Jury Deliberations Resume Friday In Trial Of Former Amtrak Engineer Brandon Bostian
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The jury has been deliberating for hours as they try to decide a verdict in the trial of former Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian. There's been a hiccup in jury deliberations Friday.
The judge in the case has discharged one of the jurors so he can overcome grief due to his sister's death on Thursday. An alternate juror will place him and they'll start deliberating again at 1 p.m. The deliberations must start from scratch.
Jurors only deliberated for a few minutes on Thursday.
Bostian is facing several charges, including involuntary manslaughter.
In 2015, eight people were killed and more than 200 were injured after an Amtrak train Bostian was at the controls of ran off the track.
The train rounded a curve at more than 100 miles per hour, in a 50 mile per hour zone.
The defense says Bostian was distracted by radio chatter about people throwing rocks at nearby trains.
"The defense has offered situational unawareness as a defense here," Tom Kline, an attorney for the derailment victims, said. "It strikes me that if he were situationally unaware, that his job was to be aware."
This is the third time prosecutors have brought criminal charges against Bostian. In previous times, the judge threw out the charges and said the tragedy was an accident, not a crime.
CBS3's Madeleine Wright and Matt Petrillo contributed to this report.
Stay with CBSPhilly.com for updates on this developing story.
