Coverage: Former Massey CEO convicted on just one of three charges

Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was convicted on conspiracy to violate federal mine-safety laws yesterday for his role in a 2010 coal mine explosion that killed 29 West Virginian miners.

Blankenship was found not guilty on two other charges.

Kris Maher of The Wall Street Journal wrote about the jury’s verdict:

A jury on Thursday convicted former Massey Energy Chief Executive Don Blankenship of conspiracy to violate federal mine-safety laws but acquitted him of more onerous counts of lying to regulators and investors in connection with a 2010 coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners.

The case, which riveted the coal-centric state for nearly two months, sets a precedent for prosecutors to use safety laws to target high-ranking corporate executives.

Mr. Blankenship, 65 years old, is believed to be the first chief executive of a major U.S. corporation to be convicted of workplace-safety-related charges brought after a deadly industrial accident. The explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine was the worst U.S. mining accident in four decades.

William Taylor, Mr. Blankenship’s attorney, who previously argued that prosecutors had tried to elevate allegations of corporate mismanagement to a crime, told reporters outside the federal courthouse that he would appeal.

“This case should never have been brought,” he said. “This is a record which will be very full of errors on appeal.”

Alan Blinder of The New York Times explained how the prosecution was unable to convict Blankenship on all charges:

Last November, almost three years after the company that bought Massey agreed to a $209 million settlement with the Justice Department, a grand jury indicted Mr. Blankenship. He assembled a roster of lawyers for a defense that cost millions of dollars, while prosecutors weighed how to present a complicated case. Unlike the prosecutors, Mr. Taylor would not agree to discuss how the case unfolded.

There were, for instance, matters of how to explore the details of mining with jurors — prosecutors even considered taking the jury to a simulated mine — and how to explain gaps between the law and common perceptions of it, a particular concern for the conspiracy count.

“The hard part is getting the jury to understand that an unspoken conspiracy is just as much a conspiracy as sitting in a back room writing out a pact in blood,” said Steven R. Ruby, an assistant United States attorney.

In the end, it was just the conspiracy charge that persuaded jurors.

“I think it is a compromise verdict, but you have to remember that the two charges that received acquittals were for conduct quite different than culpability for operating an unsafe coal mine and violating laws that are intended to prevent precisely what occurred,” said Patrick C. McGinley, a West Virginia University law professor who was involved in the state’s investigation of the deaths at Upper Big Branch.

“A century of mine disasters and failing to hold coal company executives responsible is over,” he said.

And here in Charleston, family members of Upper Big Branch miners said they were somewhat vindicated by the verdict.

“Even though Mr. Blankenship may not be convicted of all of these crimes, he is guilty, my friends, and he is not guilty of just being a liar, cheating fraud,” said Judy Jones Petersen, whose brother worked at Upper Big Branch.

She later added, “I just wanted someone to step forward and say, ‘He is guilty. He is guilty.’ ”

Lydia O’Connor of The Huffington Post quoted officials who were pleased with the verdict despite Blankenship only being found guilty on only one charge:

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez applauded the verdict as a win for mineworkers.

“Today’s verdict sends a clear message that no mine operator is above the law, that there must be accountability when people lose their lives because of the neglect of their employer,” he said. “Workers in this country have the right to go home safe and healthy at the end of every shift, and the jury clearly recognized the violation of that right in this case.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) hailed the jury’s guilty verdict.

“After a long and exhaustive trial, I am pleased the jury’s decision today has brought some measure of justice to one of the most tragic mining disasters in recent history,” he said. “With this verdict, the state of West Virginia has set precedence and signaled that we will not allow the prioritization of production and profits over the safety of our workers. While nothing can ever bring back the 29 beloved souls who we lost on that tragic day, I hope that today brings some closure and peace to the families of the miners.”

Evan Osnos of The New Yorker described how revelations from the trial will prove to be a lasting legacy:

The most lasting legacy may reside in the trial itself: the portrait, revealed in internal memos and recordings, of a toothless regulatory system and a corporate culture that exposes the men and women of Appalachia to extraordinary risk. (Last year, I wrote about the politics that contributed to one of America’s largest chemical leaks, at a facility in Charleston, West Virginia.) In one memo, from the summer of 2009, Bill Ross, a former Massey employee who was tasked with improving safety, documented a system on the edge of a tragedy. A foreman explained to Ross, “We are told to run, run, run until we get caught; when we get caught, then we will fix it.” When Blankenship was told of that memo, he did not take actions to heed its conclusions; he ordered it to stay “privileged and confidential,” saying, presciently, that, in the event of a trial, it would be “a terrible document to have in discovery.”

Some of the company’s most brazen deceptions concerned efforts to prevent black-lung disease, a potentially fatal ailment caused by inhaling dust. In a recorded phone call played for jurors, Blankenship was overheard saying, “Black lung is not an issue in this industry that is worth the effort they put into it.” According to a memo sent months later to Blankenship by Stephanie Ojeda, a Massey lawyer, Ross had warned, “Massey is plainly cheating on dust sampling at some of its operations.” The jury heard testimony that miners were told to wear dust pumps inside their coveralls, in order to skew the results, or to hang monitors in the fresh-air tunnel, far away from the dust that workers inhaled. An investigation later found that at least seventeen of the twenty-nine miners who died in the explosion had suffered from black lung.