COSTA CONCORDIA CAPTAIN SENTENCED TO 16 YEARS FOR MANSLAUGHTER..

The captain of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship, Francesco Schettino, whom told the court called “reckless idiot", was convicted and sentenced Wednesday to 16 years and one month in prison for manslaughter, causing the 2012 shipwreck that claimed 32 lives and abandoning the luxury liner while many passengers and crew were still aboard.

The three-judge panel handed down 10 years for 32 counts of manslaughter, five years for causing the Jan. 13, 2012, shipwreck when the Concordia rammed a reef near Giglio island, and one year for abandoning the ship while many of the luxury liner's 4,200 passengers and crew were still aboard during a chaotic, delayed evacuation.

The court added a month to the sentence for Schettino's downplaying the gravity of the problem in his communications with maritime authorities. Schettino wasn't present when Judge Giovanni Puliatti read out the verdict in a Grosseto theater, as is his right under Italian law.

His lawyer, Domenico Pepe, expressed some satisfaction that the court gave Schettino 10 years less than prosecutors demanded, but said "16 years are a lot." Pepe said he would appeal the decision. His lawyers said they hadn't yet spoken by phone with the defendant.

In court earlier Wednesday, the former captain told the court earlier he was being "sacrificed" to safeguard the economic interests of his employer and broke down in sobs immediately before the panel began deliberating.

Schettino said the verdict "should have involved an entire organization and instead sees me as the only defendant." "My head was sacrificed to serve economic interests," the 54-year-old Neapolitan seaman said, unable to finish his statement.

The court, which also barred him from operating as a ship's captain for five years, rejected prosecutors' request that Schettino be immediately arrested, saying he had participated in the trial and didn't pose a flight risk. In Italy, defendants have two levels of appeals and sentences don't begin being served until those appeals are exhausted.

Source:abc News