https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2778423-Blankenship-Defense-Sentencing-Memo.html
The prosecution's sentencing memo:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2778360-Government-Sentencing-Memo-Blankenship.html
Ken Ward's story: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/blankenship-trial/20160328/government-seeks-maximum-jail-fine-for-blankenship
Highlights (from Ken Ward):
"Defense attorneys argued that Blankenship should receive probation and a fine, with no jail time. They said such a sentence would provide “ample warning and deterrence” to other coal executives.
...Arguing that Don Blankenship made a “cold-blooded decision to gamble with the lives of the men and women who worked for him,” prosecutors on Monday urged a federal judge to sentence the former Massey Energy Co. CEO to the maximum sentence allowed under a law government attorneys said provides for only “paltry” punishment for mine safety and health crimes. Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Irene C. Berger to order Blankenship to serve a year in prison and pay a $250,000 fine. -
...
While Blankenship was not specifically charged or convicted of causing the Upper Big Branch explosion, Ruby argued that the mining industry has known “for a very long time what makes coal mines explode” and also has known “for a very long time that some mine operators will ignore these hard-learned lessons until the law compels them to take notice. “It shocks the conscience that in the 21st century, knowing all that has been learned from decades of grief in our nation’s mines, the CEO of a major coal company would willfully conspire against the laws that protect his workers’ lives,” Ruby wrote. “One struggles for words to describe the inhumanity required for a mogul like [the] defendant to send working men and women into needless, mortal jeopardy for no purpose other than to pile up more money.
“The law, as it stands, offers no adequate punishment for his crime. But what the law does allow, the court should impose: a year in prison and the maximum fine,” Ruby wrote. “Don Blankenship owes at least that much to the men and women who worked at UBB.”
See the whole article at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/blankenship-trial/20160328/government-seeks-maximum-jail-fine-for-blankenship#sthash.wefDVkgh.dpuf
