By bizn_fun 
In the trial, Motin’s defence lawyer argued that his client, although at fault for the crash that left a crewman presumed dead, his actions did not reach the bar for gross negligence manslaughter.
Defence barrister James Leonard KC argued that “human error” did not amount to gross negligence.
Motin, the defence argued, had tried to alter the path of the Solong so that it would avoid the Stena Immaculate, but the automatic controls were faulty and wouldn’t disengage.
After the Solong was one nautical mile away from the Stena Immaculate, Leonard told the jury Motin was “utterly convinced he’s got manual control”, but “that is the big mistake, he has pressed the wrong button.”
The defence lawyer said even an emergency stop at that point in time would not have stopped a crash and could have even impacted the Stena Immaculate’s accommodation area, putting more lives at risk.
Nicholson and the prosecution said they didn’t believe there was any mechanical failing to blame, and called the auto-pilot story “ludicrous”, but even if there was a steering fault Motin never contacted ship engineers to report an issue.
“He could have firstly called an engineer or called for assistance, but the obvious thing to do would have been to slow the vessel down,” he said.
And the detective told the BBC that corrective action could have been taken by Motin well before that point, because the Stena Immaculate wasn’t moving.
“You have a large ship at anchor [the Stena Immaculate]…around about 170 metres in length. It’s been at anchor for over eight hours. It’s visible on radar,” he said.
“You then have Captain Motin who acknowledges that he sees that vessel on his radar. At the very least he sees it at 9 miles.
“He knows it’s on a collision course, but he doesn’t alter his heading and he doesn’t alter his speed…at 3 miles he says he can see the vessel out of his window, but he still doesn’t take any action whatsoever.”
Nicholson said at the very least, Motin “should have sounded an alarm” to his crew and to the Stena Immaculate.
“That would have prevented the death of Mark Pernia, who was in the bow of the vessel at the point of collision,” he said.