UPDATE Day-1 morning session– Jury selection began with 100 potential jurors called to the federal courthouse in Charleston.
MetroNews reporter Shauna Johnson says media and UBB family members were escorted to an overflow courtroom to watch the proceedings on video. Potential jurors were asked general questions and some jurors were called to the judge’s bench to answer more specific questions.
Johnson says 100 additional potential jurors will report Friday with a third group of 100 scheduled for next Monday. A 12-member jury will be seated.
Blankenship arrived in front of the federal courthouse at around 8:30 a.m. and when asked how he felt he said, “I always feel good.” He also denied any wrongdoing.
Several family members of UBB victims are in attendance.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Jury selection begins Thursday in Charleston Federal Court for the trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship who is facing three criminal charges for his alleged actions prior to and after the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster.
It’s a case that Ellen Smith, managing editor of Mine Safety and Health News, calls a “terribly important” case for mine safety and health laws and corporate laws, especially when it comes to accountability among corporate officers.
“That is the one thing that under U.S. corporate law it’s nearly impossible to do, is to hold the person at the top responsible,” Smith told MetroNews.
Blankenship is accused of falsifying coal dust samples, violating mine safety standards and defrauding financial regulators through operations at UBB, the Raleigh County mine where 29 coal miners were killed in a massive explosion on April 5, 2010.
It’s alleged Blankenship knew that hundreds of safety law violations were happening every year at UBB and that he had the ability to prevent most of those violations, that Blankenship fostered and participated in a practice of routine safety violations, that he impeded the work of the Mine Safety and Health Administration at UBB and that, after the explosion, he made false statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Massey stockholders.
Federal prosecutors claim Blankenship was motivated by profit.
“When we’re looking at personal liability, under the law, the history in mine safety law has been that it is the foreman and the supervisors who are held responsible because they are down in the mine,” said Smith.
“Unprecedented” is how Smith describes the case brought against Blankenship who was at the top of Massey’s chain of command. “This is the first time that this has ever been done. We’ve never seen this before on mine safety issues,” she said.
Hughie Stover, a former security director at UBB, spent three years in prison for making false statements during the federal UBB investigation while Gary May, former UBB superintendent, received a 21 month sentence for violating mine safety regulations.
Blankenship’s trial has been delayed several times. U.S. District Judge Irene Berger denied the latest request from Blankenship’s team to again reset the trial date for January 2016.
The 300 prospective jurors were required to fill out a lengthy questionnaire that included 87 questions over 17 pages.
“I don’t think you can necessarily win a trial with the selection of a jury,” said Harvey Peyton, a Nitro attorney and MetroNews legal analyst who will be following the Blankenship trial. “It would be extremely unusual to be able to find 12 like minds out of a randomly selected group, but you could certainly lose or diminish your prospects of prevailing at jury selection.”
Peyton said jurors will have to keep one thing in mind. “He’s (Blankenship) not on trial for the deaths of 29 people. This is not a murder case. It’s not a homicide case. This case goes much further than that,” Peyton said.
Smith agreed. “If it was a trial regarding the lives of those 29 miners, you would see manslaughter charges, right? That’s not what we’re looking at here.”
If convicted of all three charges of mine safety violations and fraud, Blankenship could face a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
MetroNews will provide coverage of the Blankenship trial for its duration on the MetroNews Radio Network and online.