By Ken Ward Jr. As prosecutors and defense lawyers prepare for this week's sentencing of Don Blankenship, both sides are looking backward: Blankenship's lawyers are re-arguing key parts of the case they lost at trial, while government attorneys want the case to be viewed in the context of West Virginia's long history of major coal-mining disasters. Defense lawyers say Blankenship shouldn't spend any time in jail, maintaining that his conviction doesn't mean the jury accepted the government's "broad arguments" about Blankenship's lead role in a conspiracy that put coal production and corporate profits over miner health and safety at Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 miners died in an April 2010 explosion. Prosecutors asked for the maximum penalty, and are emphasizing the serious risks posed by the kinds of longstanding mine safety rules - ventilation standards and coal-dust controls aimed at preventing such explosions - that Blankenship was found guilty of conspiring to violate. "Let us dispense with the defense's obfuscation and double-talk and say plainly what Don Blankenship did: He made a conscious, cold-blooded decision to gamble with the lives of the men and women who worked for him," Assistant U.S.

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Topics:  West Virginia   Kanawha County   Charleston   
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