Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship’s year in federal custody ends today, May 10.
Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship speaks to reporters in April 2010, following the explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine. (AP file photo)
Blankenship, 67, has finished serving his one-year sentence for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards in connection with the April 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine, which took the lives of 29 miners.
He was found guilty of the felony conspiracy charge in December 2015 and reported to the Taft Correctional Institution in California five months later. A federal appeals court nixed his bid to stay out of jail while his attorneys sought to overturn his conviction. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed his conviction, finding no reversible error by U.S. District Judge Irene Berger.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said Blankenship was transferred from Taft to a federal halfway house in Arizona on March 10, then put on home confinement. Blankenship still faces one year of supervised release.
