CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The U.S. Supreme Court decided Friday to hear an appeal of whether West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin should have stepped aside in a case involving Massey Energy, after Massey's chief executive spent millions of dollars to unseat Benjamin's opponent in the 2004 election.

Benjamin twice voted in the majority in 3-2 decisions to overturn a $50 million verdict originally awarded to Harman Mining Corp. in 2002 against A.T. Massey Coal, subsequently renamed Massey Energy Co. Harman and its owner, Hugh Caperton, contended that Massey commandeered a coal supply agreement and forced the smaller company into bankruptcy.

Last year, the verdict had grown with interest to an estimated $76 million.

Massey chief executive Don Blankenship spent more than $3 million in the 2004 race that secured Benjamin's seat on West Virginia's only appeals court. Blankenship provided most of the funding for a group called And For The Sake Of The Kids, which ran ads attacking incumbent justice Warren McGraw.

After Massey appealed the original Harman verdict in 2006, Harman and Caperton repeatedly asked Benjamin to step aside from the case. Benjamin refused.

In July, Harman and Caperton petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether Benjamin should have stepped aside.

The court gets about 10,000 requests a year to hear cases, and accepts fewer than 100 of those.

Caperton said Friday he was extremely pleased that the high court had agreed to hear the case, saying it was a "great day."

"In this country, money has begun to pervade and permeate every election that's held, and I agree that it's the right of each citizen to support their candidate, but you can't have Supreme Court seats being propped up by millions of dollars from one individual or group," he said. "It makes the appearance of impropriety so great that normal citizens like myself lose faith in the judicial system."

In an e-mail Friday, West Virginia Supreme Court spokeswoman Jennifer Bundy wrote, "It is the policy of Justice Brent Benjamin not to comment on matters pending before the Court or the U.S. Supreme Court."

"We respect the Court's decision to review this case and look forward to the ultimate resolution of this matter. We are confident that the Harman case was properly decided by the West Virginia Supreme Court," said Shane Harvey, Massey vice president and general counsel, in a news release.

In August, five groups, including the American Bar Association, filed "friend of the court" briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case.

"[A]n appearance of impropriety may be created where, as in the present case, a judicial officer denies a recusal motion and continues to sit on a case where one of the parties has made significant contributions to the judge's election campaign," states the amicus brief filed by the American Bar Association.

"With the cost of judicial campaigns increasing, these issues are arising throughout the country, and there is need for guidance from the [Supreme] Court as to the boundaries imposed by the Due Process Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment] in these circumstances."

On Thursday, an editorial in The New York Times encouraged the high court to hear the case.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The U.S. Supreme Court decided Friday to hear an appeal of whether West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin should have stepped aside in a case involving Massey Energy, after Massey's chief executive spent millions of dollars to unseat Benjamin's opponent in the 2004 election.

Benjamin twice voted in the majority in 3-2 decisions to overturn a $50 million verdict originally awarded to Harman Mining Corp. in 2002 against A.T. Massey Coal, subsequently renamed Massey Energy Co. Harman and its owner, Hugh Caperton, contended that Massey commandeered a coal supply agreement and forced the smaller company into bankruptcy.

Last year, the verdict had grown with interest to an estimated $76 million.

Massey chief executive Don Blankenship spent more than $3 million in the 2004 race that secured Benjamin's seat on West Virginia's only appeals court. Blankenship provided most of the funding for a group called And For The Sake Of The Kids, which ran ads attacking incumbent justice Warren McGraw.

After Massey appealed the original Harman verdict in 2006, Harman and Caperton repeatedly asked Benjamin to step aside from the case. Benjamin refused.

In July, Harman and Caperton petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether Benjamin should have stepped aside.

The court gets about 10,000 requests a year to hear cases, and accepts fewer than 100 of those.

Caperton said Friday he was extremely pleased that the high court had agreed to hear the case, saying it was a "great day."

"In this country, money has begun to pervade and permeate every election that's held, and I agree that it's the right of each citizen to support their candidate, but you can't have Supreme Court seats being propped up by millions of dollars from one individual or group," he said. "It makes the appearance of impropriety so great that normal citizens like myself lose faith in the judicial system."

In an e-mail Friday, West Virginia Supreme Court spokeswoman Jennifer Bundy wrote, "It is the policy of Justice Brent Benjamin not to comment on matters pending before the Court or the U.S. Supreme Court."

"We respect the Court's decision to review this case and look forward to the ultimate resolution of this matter. We are confident that the Harman case was properly decided by the West Virginia Supreme Court," said Shane Harvey, Massey vice president and general counsel, in a news release.

In August, five groups, including the American Bar Association, filed "friend of the court" briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case.

"[A]n appearance of impropriety may be created where, as in the present case, a judicial officer denies a recusal motion and continues to sit on a case where one of the parties has made significant contributions to the judge's election campaign," states the amicus brief filed by the American Bar Association.

"With the cost of judicial campaigns increasing, these issues are arising throughout the country, and there is need for guidance from the [Supreme] Court as to the boundaries imposed by the Due Process Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment] in these circumstances."

On Thursday, an editorial in The New York Times encouraged the high court to hear the case.

"Judicial neutrality and the appearance of neutrality are basic to due process," the editorial states. "The justices would do a great deal to protect essential fairness by making clear that outsize campaign expenditures trigger a duty of recusal on the part of the beneficiaries."

West Virginia is one of 39 states that elect Supreme Court justices. The five candidates who ran for the two open seats in 2008 spent a total of $2.72 million.

In addition, a group of pro-business organizations led by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and its national counterpart poured almost $1 million into advertising on the race.

The state Supreme Court voted for the first time to overturn the Harman verdict in November 2007. The case gained national prominence two months later, after lawyers for Harman and Caperon filed photographs with the court that showed Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard with Blank-enship in Monaco during the summer of 2006, while the Harman case was pending before the court.

Maynard, who grew up with Blankenship in Mingo County, later said the longtime friends were vacationing separately and met up several times.

He bowed to mounting pressure in February and recused himself from the case, and said he would step aside on all Massey-related cases.

Justice Larry Starcher, who had made public comments critical of Blankenship, calling him "stupid" and "a clown," also stepped aside from the Harman case in February, and called for Benjamin to do the same.

Benjamin refused and, as acting chief justice in Maynard's absence, appointed circuit judges to replace Maynard and Starcher on the case. In April, with those replacements, the court once again voted in Massey's favor, with Benjamin again part of the 3-2 majority.

Three months later, Benjamin published a 58-page concurring opinion in which he maintained that he rendered an impartial and fair decision.

"I neither have, nor at any time have ever had, any direct, personal, substantial or pecuniary interest, real or otherwise, in the outcome of this case," Benjamin wrote. "The simple invitation to guess about hidden motivations of judges or colleagues on the bench caused by a selective recounting of facts or by the trafficking of innuendo and half-truths serves only to indulge suspicions and doubts concerning the integrity of elected officials."

Both Starcher and Maynard will leave the court when the newly elected justices are sworn in next January. Starcher did not seek another 12-year term, and Maynard lost his bid for re-election when he failed to earn one of two nominations by finishing third in May's Democratic primary. Benjamin's term runs until 2016.

In 2006, Massey sued the West Virginia Supreme Court in federal court, alleging that the court violated the company's right to due process by not having an impartial review when justices refuse to disqualify themselves.

The lawsuit, which is pending, alleges that Starcher had shown a "strong personal bias" against Blankenship and Massey.

As of last month, the court had spent roughly $425,000 defending that lawsuit, said court administrator Steve Canterbury.

Reach Andrew Clevenger at acleven...@wvgazette.com or 348-1723.