US mine blast: Ex-coal CEO Blankenship at end of prison term

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A Bureau of Prisons spokesman didn’t return requests for comment, and Blankenship was still listed late Wednesday afternoon as being at the halfway house. Blankenship still must serve one year of supervised release.

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Manchin said in a statement that he hopes Blankenship “chooses to do the right thing and disappear from the public eye.”

Blankenship was sentenced last year for a misdemeanour conviction of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards at Upper Big Branch, where 29 workers died. He was acquitted of felonies that could have stretched his sentence to 30 years.

“I’m glad he had time to reflect on the pain he caused,” former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin, whose office in Charleston prosecuted the case, said in a text message to The Associated Press ahead of Blankenship’s release. “I hope he used it wisely and will come out of prison ready to make amends.”

It wasn’t immediately clear where Blankenship will serve his supervised release. After his indictment, federal prosecutors indicated Blankenship owned homes in several states, and Blankenship said he lived in Las Vegas. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Charleston referred questions to the Bureau of Prisons.

Blankenship’s attorney, William Taylor, didn’t return requests for comment.

Former Upper Big Branch miner Tommy Davis, who lost a son, brother and a nephew in the explosion, said Blankenship should still be in prison.

“He didn’t get what he deserved,” Davis said.

Four investigations found worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited accumulations of coal dust and methane gas at Upper Big Branch. Broken and clogged water sprayers then allowed what should have been a minor flare-up to become an inferno.

Blankenship has said natural gas, and not methane gas and excess coal dust, was at the root of the explosion. Authorities dismissed that argument.

Massey was later bought by Alpha Natural Resources of Bristol, Virginia. Alpha agreed in 2011 to pay $210 million to compensate the grieving families, bankroll cutting-edge safety improvements and pay for years of violations by Massey Energy. Alpha announced in 2012 that the mine would be permanently sealed.

Blankenship, 67, served most of his sentence at Correctional Institute Taft near Bakersfield, California. While there, he wrote a 67-page blog before his appeal was heard in which he called himself an “American political prisoner.”

During the trial, prosecutors called Blankenship a bullish micromanager who meddled in the smallest details of Upper Big Branch. They said Massey’s safety programs were just a facade — never backed by more money to hire additional miners or take more time on safety tasks.

John Raby, The Associated Press