Murder or Manslaughter? Massey Mine Electrician Disabled Safety Monitor

[KittyWampus]

to prevent machine from repeatedly shutting down.

I'm wondering from a legal perspective if this could be considered murder.

Who would be bringing charges? Federal or State or both?

July 15, 2010

An NPR News investigation has documented a dangerous and potentially illegal act at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia two months before a massive April explosion killed 29 mine workers.

On Feb. 13, an electrician deliberately disabled a methane gas monitor on a continuous mining machine because the monitor repeatedly shut down the machine.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128516777&f=1002&sc=igg2

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Manslaughter.

[Riftaxe]

2. Incompetence...err i mean manslaughter

The supervisor who ordered it on the other hand......

[blondeatlast]

3. Good question. It's hard to argue that the underling who actually rigged the thing would NOT

be aware that doing so might result in death. Plus, as someone in another thread pinted out, they had to call out to find out how to do it; sdmeone higher-up HAD to know it was being done.

My unlawyerly guess is voluntary manslaughter.

Let's hope that WV has a gutsy AG.

[MerryBlooms]

4. Emotionally - murder

Legally - manslaughter ... if we're lucky to get any sort of conviction.

[hedgehog]

5. SOP for just about every place I've ever worked.

"It's impossible to make a fool-proof design because fools are so ingenious."

Every engineer has a horror story about a shut off device designed to protect people and how someone found a way to bypass it. Example: Push button that must be held in to operate compactor, thereby ensuring that someone was in attendance when compactor was running. By-pass: Wedge a wooden match stick into the button to hold it down while you go out for smoke.

In this case it never occurred to people that maybe the machinery was shutting down because the methane level was dangerously high. Instead of identifying the real problem ( too much methane) and fixing it (boost air circulation) they identified a secondary problem (machine won't run) and fixed that!