Blankenship on Trial: Guilty of Conspiracy

Although the former CEO was only convicted of a misdemeanor, the U.S. Attorney’s Office still called the conviction “an enormous victory”.

The jury returned to work Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, West Virginia.

In 2012, Hughie Elbert Stover, UBB’s former security director, was the first to be convicted.

(Kenny Kemp/Charleston Gazette via AP). Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015.

The misdemeanor count could mean up to one year of jail time for the former coal executive. Together, the three counts carried a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

“Just a wink. A wink and a nod”, he said, citing a phrase used by the defense to debunk the conspiracy notion. Then he laughed and walked away.

Blankenship has argued that federal regulators and an act of God – a sudden release of methane from the rocks – were responsible for the mine disaster at Upper Big Branch that killed 29 miners five years ago. The massive effort proved complex and daunting for federal prosecutors, and yielded a fraction of what they sought.

Blankenship said he was singled out for his conservative Republican political activism, and according to his attorneys, he plans to appeal. “It doesn’t matter who you are, how rich you are, how powerful you are, if you violate the laws and gamble with the lives of your workers, you will be held accountable”, Goodwin said. This is a case which should never have been brought.

Prosecutors charged that Mr. Blankenship was the driving force behind an often unspoken conspiracy to violate safety laws to keep the coal and profits flowing at the company.

Blankenship was also acquitted of making false statements and securities fraud about company safety after the deadly blast. His attorneys said there was no evidence Blankenship was involved in a conspiracy.

Public Citizen’s Rob Weissman said that “for far too long in this nation’s history, coal operators have recklessly endangered their workers’ lives, with thousands of workers dying in accidents and many hundreds of thousands more dying and suffering from black lung and associated diseases”.

It’s a small measure of justice for the families of the fallen miners who packed the front row of the courthouse to hear Judge Irene C. Berger read the verdict. Massey polluted the waterways that had sustained Blankenship’s forebears, rained coal dust on the schoolyards where his miners’ children played, and subjected the men he grew up with in southern West Virginia to unsafe working conditions.

The conviction caps a wide-spanning investigation into Massey following the explosion.

And prosecutors noted that justice isn’t only measured by the prison sentence.

“We don’t convict people in this country on the basis of maybes”, said Taylor, who led a defense team that, in a risky legal strategy, chose not to call any witnesses.