Five years ago, a massive underground explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia killed 29 miners–the largest mining disaster to take place in this country in decades. On Thursday afternoon, the man largely responsible for this massacre got the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, was found guilty of conspiring to violate federal mine safety rules. However, he only faces a maximum of one year in federal prison.
Blankenship was indicted last year for being the mastermind of a massive conspiracy to flout mine safety and health standards over a two-year period leading up to the disaster. He was charged with conspiracy to violate mine safety standards, defrauding the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and securities fraud. Prosecutors contended that Blankenship was obsessed with running coal above all else. To that end, they claimed that Blankenship and others not only violated mine safety standards, but deliberately threw federal inspectors off the scent.
Prosecutors based their case on Upper Big Branch’s rampant violations of federal regulations governing ventilation, dust control, and roof support. The federal complaint cited numerous memos in which Blankenship ordered mine supervisors to “run coal”–and safety standards be damned. As a result, between 2008 and 2010, Upper Big Branch was cited 283 times for improper ventilation–important since the explosion was caused by a massive ignition of coal dust and methane.
The defense contended that the government misinterpreted a number of those memos, and failed to prove that the violations at Upper Big Branch were willful. Lead defense counsel Bill Taylor claimed the government was trying to convict Blankenship “on the basis of maybes.” He was so confident of this that rather than call any witnesses, he used his cross-examinations of several Massey executives to argue that the government hadn’t proved Blankenship’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even though Blankenship got a really big favor when he was acquitted on all but one charge, U. S. Attorney Booth Godwin sees this as a victory. He told reporters that it was the first time in his memory that a CEO had been convicted for workplace safety crimes. Taylor thinks that even a year in prison is too long; he plans to appeal.
More than a dozen miners testified that they were forced to work with inadequate air, excessive levels of coal dust, and other problems. It was as close as prosecutors got to formally stating that Blankenship was legally responsible for the massacre, even though there was no real-world doubt that Blankenship’s malfeasance and nonfeasance caused this tragedy.
However, according to Charleston Gazette-Mail coal beat writer Ken Ward, prosecutors opted not to charge Blankenship with second-degree murder because it would have opened the door for Blankenship to argue that the explosion was caused by a sudden spike in natural gas. Never mind that rescuers were forced to pull back at least twice due to high methane levels even though there was no active mining–a condition that simply doesn’t happen naturally.
Nonetheless, prosecutors were apparently afraid that giving Blankenship a window to present a remotely plausible alternative explanation for the massacre could have blown their entire case. It only takes one person to hang a jury. As a result, the only reason Blankenship faced any significant jail time was because he falsely told shareholders that he did not tolerate safety violations–a statement that was also filed with the SEC. By comparison, the charges at the heart of the government’s case–violating safety regulations and defrauding the MSHA–carried a combined six years in prison.
Reaction among the families of the massacre’s victims was somewhat mixed. Judy Jones Peterson, whose brother died in the explosion, said that Blankenship now wears “the cloak of criminal shame.” However, Shirley Whitt, who also lost her brother, wondered loudly if “a misdemeanor is enough for what this man did.”
Whitt isn’t the only one. The fact that Blankenship potentially faced more jail time for lying to his shareholders than for creating the conditions that led to this massacre is an insult to her brother and the other 28 victims. When you turn your mine into a death trap and only face one year in prison for it, there is something very wrong. Congress needs to fix this, and fix this now.
