A federal appeals court did not sound receptive to former mine security chief Hughie Elbert Stover's claim that he was improperly convicted of lying to investigators after the 2010 explosion that killed 29 men at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia.
Stover also was convicted last year of illegally ordering a subordinate to destroy documents relevant to the investigation, but a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not even get to that issue during a 20-minute hearing Friday. Instead, the court focused on Stover's claim that there was no evidence he knowingly lied when he told investigators that miners were not alerted whenever inspectors arrived.
