WVA PROSECUTOR: AS "PERSON," MASSEY ENERGY CORP SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY

by R J Shulman

MONTCOAL, West Virginia - (PTSD News) - West Virginia prosecutor Socrates Weatherburn is known for two things, his strange name and for not quitting before he believes justice has been served. Weatherburn has successfully prosecuted energy companies for injuring workers and for damaging West Virginia's environment. Now he has a new target, Massey Energy Corporation, those he believes are responsible for the coal mining distater that has left at least 25 miners dead, many injured and four missing.

"If corporations have been declared people by the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case," said Weatherburn, "then they should be able to get the death penalty for mass murder, just as if a person killed 25 others." West Virginia last execution was in 1989, when a 41-year old Ray Lee Gobble was put to death after being convicted of murder after a drinking spree in which he drank an entire vat of home made whiskey, mistook his cousin Pooker for a "herd of possum" and shot him 17 times." Weatherburn said executing a corporation would be cheaper and less messy than executing a person. "With a corporation to be terminated, all we'd have to do is travel to Delaware and pull it's charter," Weatherburn said.

"Massey knew of its unsafe working conditions and with reckless abandon and intent to violate basic safety laws deliberately subjected workers to conditions that were not only forseeable to cause great bodily harm, but were guaranteed to do so," Weatherburn told reporters in Beckley, West Virginia.

Massey CEO Don Blankenship said, "Weatherburn is a grandstanding Obamanista liberal terrorist who hates the free enterprise system so much he will twist the law to try and separate us from our profits. I can tell you that we at Massey are prepared to spend an unlimited amount to defeat Weatherburn in November. "However," Blankenship said, "our board of directors may decide its better for the bottom line to use free speech, about 10,000 pieces of it up front and 10,000 more when our operator calls and tell us the job regarding Weatherburn has been done."

for the real news, visit CLG at http://www.legitgov.org/