Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship found guilty of conspiracy

U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said following the split verdict handed down Thursday in the Don Blankenship criminal trial he was not at all disappointed.

A jury has found former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship guilty on one of three counts he was facing in connection to a 2010 coal mine disaster that killed 29 mine workers.

Mr. Blankenship was tried on charges of conspiring to break safety laws and defrauding mine regulators at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch Mine, and lying to financial regulators and investors about safety. The misdemeanor charge carries up to one year in prison.

But the verdict was, by most measures, a defeat for the Justice Department, which had pursued a prosecution that could have led to a 30-year prison term.

“They got a conviction on, to me, what was the most important count and the most important issue, that he conspired to violate mine safety laws”, said Tony Oppegard, a mine safety advocate and Lexington attorney representing miners.

But prosecutors successfully argued that Blankenship was more concerned with profits than the lives of his workers, and reminded jurors that those who set conspiracies in motion rarely come right out and say, “I want you to break the law”.

Mr. Blankenship was convicted on a misdemeanor conspiracy count but acquitted of making false statements and securities fraud.

“The citations you’re hearing about are not crimes”, William W. Taylor III, Blankenship’s top attorney, said in court November 17. 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.

Blankenship’s defense did not call a single witness in the case.

Judy Jones Petersen, whose brother Dean Jones was among the 29 men who died in the Upper Big Branch explosion, said she felt vindicated by the verdict and directed a scathing comment at Blankenship: “Although you may not be judged responsible by the courts of this land, you are guilty”.

“We don’t convict people in this country on the basis of maybes”, said Taylor.

The conviction becomes the centerpiece of a wide-spanning investigation into Massey that began after the explosion.

Prosecutors contended that Blankenship was a micromanager who meddled in the smallest details at the mine and cared more about money than safety. Blankenship then told Blanchard not to let the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration run his mines.

Sentencing is reportedly expected to take place early next year.

The death toll at Upper Big Branch, about 65km south of Charleston, was the highest in a United States mine accident since 91 miners were killed in a 1972 fire at an Idaho silver mine. “We hope this serves as a strong deterrent to all the other fossil fuel executives who have similar moral and legal obligations to protect their workers and the communities in which they operate”, Hitt said. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.