Coal executive found guilty on federal conspiracy charge

The former coal executive whose company owned the West Virginia mine at the center of a deadly 2010 disaster was found guilty Thursday on a federal conspiracy charge.

Don Blankenship, who led Massey Energy Company at the time of the disaster, was found guilty by a federal jury in Charleston, W.Va., of conspiring to willfully violate federal mine safety rules leading up to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.

{mosads}It is the first time that a coal executive has been charged and found guilty for violations related to a disaster at a mine.

The jury, after 10 days of deliberations — during which they at one point said they were deadlocked — found Blankenship not guilty, however, of lying to investors and lying to federal authorities in the wake of the 2010 mine collapse that killed 29 workers.

It was the deadliest mine disaster in the country in 40 years. Investigators found that a coal dust explosion caused the collapse that trapped the miners.

The trial came after a five-year federal investigation, the newspaper said.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who was governor of West Virginia at the time of the disaster, said he was happy that the case is over.

“I’m praying that some of the families get closure,” Manchin said at the Capitol on Thursday. “I know it wasn’t everything they wanted, probably, but I think justice has been served, and I think there will be closure, and I’m happy for the families, for that reason.”

In a trial that lasted more than a month, prosecutors told jurors that Upper Big Branch had far more safety violations leading up to the collapse than comparable mines, and Blankenship was personally responsible for not taking basic measures to fix the problems.

“The defendant ran Massey in a way that violating mine laws was inevitable, and he knew it,” U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin told jurors, according to the Gazette-Mail. “He knew that you simply could not mine the amount of coal he demanded with the limited amount of people he was willing to devote and the resources that he was willing to devote without breaking the law. And he kept right on doing it.”

Bill Taylor, leading Blankenship’s defense, said there was reasonable doubt that his client was responsible for the problems.

“There’s no proof that Don Blankenship agreed with anyone else, with others, unnamed so far, to commit willful violations of [Mine Safety and Health Administration] regulations at the Upper Big Branch Mine,” he said, according to the newspaper.

While prosecutors called 27 witnesses and presented more than 500 exhibits of evidence, the defense did not call any witnesses, including Blankenship, arguing instead that the prosecution’s witnesses proved him innocent.

Blankenship faced up to a year in prison for the charge, down from the 30 years he faced for all three charges.

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. bought Massey in 2011 and settled with federal officials for $209 million for Massey’s responsibility for the incident.

This story was updated at 2:30 p.m.