Dear Editor,
It is hard to understand why President Obama did not push the Justice Department to seek prosecutions of those wealthy individuals who clearly have engaged in criminal activities.
The Justice Department advanced all kinds of reasons why corporations such as J.P. Morgan and HSBC which made billions on risky and yes, fraudulent transactions, all of which contributed to the big recession in 2007, should not be prosecuted. First, they argue that corporations, unlike people, cannot be jailed. Yes, all too true, but the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case held that corporations were persons under the Constitution, thus entitled to First Amendment Rights which include making unlimited donations in political campaigns, but apparently none of the detriments the rest of us face because they are not considered in the criminal settings to be persons. Furthermore, they could be at least fined upon being convicted criminally.
They also express concerns that no one person in a corporation can be singled out for prosecution because the fraudulent conduct was performed jointly by several people, ignoring the concept that if individuals conspire together to engage in fraudulent transactions, this is definitely a criminal conspiracy.
Finally, they say that bringing criminal charges against a company could lead to the insolvency of that company. What about the situation of a person in a criminal matter being put into insolvency? No concerns about that.
J.P. Morgan’s profits were so large that it was able to promptly pay the US $13 billion civil penalty assessed against it for its role in the mortgage fiasco and yet cannot financially endure a criminal prosecution?
But then we have the case of 29 men who died in an explosion, fuelled by methane and coal dust, on April 5, 2010, at the mine operated by Massey Energy in West Virginia. A ream of evidence uncovered shortly after this event revealed that Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, now age 65, once a major power in the coal industry, was able to obtain forewarnings of surprise visits from the Federal mine safety agency, that he ignored safety directives and hid violations from that agency; was assessed some 369 violations in a 12 year period; threatened workers with discharge if they complained about safety issues; and spent huge amounts to influence local elections in West Virginia.
To demonstrate how, apart from the explosion, lack of basic safety requirements contributed to on-going health problems of Massey workers, 71 per cent of the workers at the mine where the explosion occurred were found to have black lung disease, compared to 3.2 per cent nationally.
Finally in October 2014, the US Attorney in West Virginia filed charges against Blankenship and trial was scheduled for January 2015, but was postponed by the presiding judge at the request of the defendant. Trial did not actually start until early October of 2015 and lasted two months during which time vast amounts of evidence showing safety violations was presented.
On December 4, 2015, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of the charge that Blankenship had “wilfully violated work place safety,” but acquitted him on two other charges, one being that he gave false statements. During trials, jurors are not told about the severity of the various charges and in this case they did not know that their guilty verdict was for a misdemeanour with a sentence of only one year, whereas the two other charges were felonies with sentences up to 20 years in prison.
Blankenship was sentenced to the one year on April 6, 2016, six years and a day after the explosion. Survivors of loved ones killed in this terrible explosion were horrified, aghast and angry. Jurors were heard to lament that their guilty verdict turned out to be only for a misdemeanour. Justice denied in another branch of the government.
Stephen Hopkins
