Jurors returned a guilty verdict on Thursday for the former chief executive of an energy company who was found to have intentionally breached safety standards in a West Virginia mine, where 29 people were killed in a 2010 explosion.
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In West Virginia, a federal jury has convicted former Massy Energy CEO Don Blankenship of conspiring to willfully violate federal mine safety laws.
He now faces the possibility of a year in jail and a maximum $250,000 fine when he will be sentenced in March.
Had Blankenship been found guilty on all three charges, he might have faced up to 30 years.
Blankenship, who headed up now-defunct Massey Energy until 2010, was indicted last November on charges that he violated federal mine safety rules and health standards at the Upper Big Branch coal mine between 2008 and 2010. He was acquitted of a more serious conspiracy charge as well as of making false statements and security fraud.
The government, Taylor said, had prosecuted a case that relied on misinformed assessments of documents, faulty testimony and a heavy dose of personal animus toward a man who was powerful but hardly revered.
Blankenship’s trial was undoubtedly watched closely by executives at ExxonMobil and Volkswagen.
The report also recounts a conversation one of the men killed in the explosion had with a neighbor the day before the event. The families say they have taken extra care not to bring attention to themselves in the proceedings, even watching their facial expressions. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, said the former executive had “blood on his hands”. “We wanted to be acquitted on all counts, but the fact the jury acquitted him on all felonies and convicted only on the misdemeanor is some consolation”, attorney Bill Taylor said. “Putting the lives of workers at risk in unsafe mines should be a felony and I will continue to push to change the law so that those operating unsafe mines are held fully accountable”, his statement said.
Don Blankenship, center, leaves the federal courthouse with his attorneys after the verdict in his trial in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015. President Barack Obama called the accident a failure of management and traveled to West Virginia to eulogize the miners.
The Massey mine explosion was the worst mining disaster in United States history.
When a reporter asked for comment, the bullish coal baron who once threatened to shoot a TV news journalist in his company’s parking lot only winked. His attorneys said there wasn’t a shred of evidence that Blankenship was involved in a conspiracy. In December that year, the US Justice Department announced that Alpha had agreed to pay a record $209 million to settle a criminal probe into safety violations at the Upper Big Branch mine. “This sends a message to all CEOs, owners and operators”. “You can’t always measure justice by the length of a prison sentence”, he said.
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Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Ruby called the verdict “an enormous victory”. Blankenship was accused of defrauding financial regulators through operations at UBB.
