CHARLESTON, W.Va — The final witness for the prosecution in the Don Blankenship criminal trial told a federal jury Tuesday Blankenship did not leave the room and did not abstain from voting on his own $11 million bonus package less than two months before the April 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 miners.
FBI Special Agent James Lafferty told Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Ruby Blankenship chaired that Massey Energy board meeting in Texas on Feb. 14, 2010. The answer about the former CEO’s compensation was the last Lafferty gave on direct testimony.
Lafferty, who is also a CPA, answered questions from Ruby beginning Tuesday morning to mid-afternoon. He started investigating the UBB disaster four days after the explosion and, for the past 23 days, he’s sat right behind the federal prosecutors calling witnesses in the Blankenship trial.
Blankenship, 65, is charged with allegedly conspiring to willfully break mine safety laws at UBB in favor of production and allegedly lying to federal investment regulators in a statement about safety filed with the Securities Exchange Commission following the blast.
Lafferty’s finished his direct testimony by going over Blankenship’s compensation packages for 2008-2010. He told the jury 75 percent of those packages were based on the performance of the business including coal production, stock prices and profit. He said $8.7 million of Blankenship’s pay was linked to those factors in 2008 and $15.4 million in 2009.
Under cross examination from Blankenship attorney James Walls, Lafferty said he did not look at what other coal companies were paying their top executives and he said it would be difficult to determine how much of Blankenship’s pay actually came from production at UBB.
Tuesday morning, Lafferty told the jury Blankenship started receiving daily violation reports on specific Massey mines, including UBB, in August 2009.
Between that time and April 2010, Lafferty testified 587 specific citations were issued for the Raleigh County mine for safety problems found with, among other issues, UBB’s ventilation plan, rock dusting and clearing of combustible materials.
As examples, Ruby showed Lafferty more than a half dozen of those citations from the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the daily violation reports that included them that had been sent on to Blankenship and other Massey executives.
“We could do this all day long, Mr. Lafferty,” Ruby said at the end of that line of questioning, immediately prompting a loud objection from Bill Taylor, one of Blankenship’s attorneys. U.S. District Judge Irene Berger sustained the objection.
Using large color-coded charts, Lafferty detailed for the jury his analysis of rock dusting using belt records from UBB prior to the explosion.
During much of March 2010, Lafferty estimated the rock dusting rate on UBB’s belts was 13 percent. Along one beltline during that time, he testified, 17 consecutive shifts passed without the recommended rock dusting being completed. On another belt, 32 shifts passed minus needed rock dusting.
In March 2010 and into April of that year, Lafferty also told the jury that cleanup of combustible materials along beltlines at UBB was often being skipped, with some kind of cleanup coming 350 out of the 700 recommended times.
The defense objected multiple times to documents being used in Lafferty’s testimony.
During the FBI investigation, Lafferty said he reviewed 1,600 recordings.
At the lunch break Tuesday, he was working through one of those recordings — a phone call that included Blankenship and two other Massey executives. They were talking about the details of wording contained in an SEC filing, prior to the UBB Disaster, along with a companion press release.
The jury has heard the recording before in this trial. In it, Blankenship notes a misspelling, which the prosecution has argued shows how detailed Blankenship was with the statements the company released. A post-UBB SEC filing and statement is the basis for two of the charges against him.
Lafferty will be back on the stand under cross examination when the trial resumes Thursday. The prosecution is expected to rest its case sometime Thursday. There will be no trial testimony on Wednesday in observance of Veterans Day.
Blankenship’s trial began on Oct. 1 with jury selection.