By Brandon Blanco (Political Chair)
In December of last year, Human Rights attorney Steven Donziger was released from federal prison in Danbury, CT under the pandemic-era early release program. Donziger will serve the rest of his sentence (136 days) under house arrest, even after he was confined in his home for 21 months (almost two years) along with being restrained by a GPS ankle bracelet.
Not only is he on house arrest, but his law license was also revoked by the New York State Bar Association, making him ineligible to practice law. So why was this human rights lawyer in jail in the first place?
Donziger is serving time for “contempt of court (a misdemeanor)”, making him the first American citizen to be charged with a misdemeanor to be placed on house arrest. He is also the first attorney ever to be charged and prosecuted for criminal contempt by a private prosecutor with financial ties to a major industry.
However, he is serving time for refusing to hand over private client information to fossil fuel giant Chevron after being ordered by a New York judge, who has ties with Chevron. So, why was Donziger suing Chevron, and why Chevron, the multi-conglomerate fossil fuel company, has a vendetta against Donziger?
In 1992, after graduating from Harvard Law School, Donziger traveled to the Ecuadorian Amazon to observe the environmental damages that Texaco (later bought by Chevron in 2001) caused towards the indigenous population. Texaco, from 1964 to 1992, has been operating in Ecuador.
According to Donziger and his team, Chevron dumped 18.5 billion gallons of toxic water and oil residues into the Ecuadorian Amazon Lago Agrio region between 1964 and 1990, which is the size of Rhode Island. The pollution caused by Chevron resulted in the rivers being contaminated and damaging the ecosystem.
The irresponsibility and the negligence by Chevron not only damaged the ecosystem but also caused residents near the amazon oil fields to be exposed to cancer, known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.” The damages by Chevron were also exemplified in the 2009 documentary Crude.
In 1993, about 30,000 local residents affected by Chevron’s negligence, including five Amazonian Indigenous groups, sued Texaco. Donziger and Environmental Prize-winning attorney and environmental advocate Pablo Fajardo represented them on behalf of the village.
In 2011, an Ecuadorian judge ruled in favor of Amazon residents and ordered Chevron to pay $18.2 billion (later reduced to $9.5 billion after being affirmed by Ecuador's Supreme Court) in cleaning up the contaminated area and to pay for the healthcare to the Amazonian residents affected by the water pollution.
Although Chevron admitted to polluting the Amazon, Chevron never complied with Ecuador's court ruling, claiming that the judges who ruled against Chevron were “corrupt” or “coerced” with no evidence. Instead of paying the $9.5 billion in damages, Chevron sued Donziger in the Southern District of New York under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act.
In 2014, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan (appointed by Bill Clinton) ruled that the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron was invalid because the decision was obtained through “egregious fraud” and that Donziger was guilty of racketeering, extortion, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering, although there was no evidence.
The only evidence that Kaplan relied upon was former Ecuadorian judge, Alberto Guerra, who claimed Donziger bribed him during the trial. However, it is important to note that Chevron’s star witness, Guerra was prepped by Chevron more than “50 occasions, paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and arranged for the judge and his family members to move to the United States with a generous monthly stipend that was 20 times the salary he received in Ecuador.” And in 2015, Guerra admitted to lying in the Amazon Pollution case and presented false evidence that incriminated Assange.
Kaplan asked the prosecutor for the Southern District of New York to prosecute Donziger for “criminal contempt” besides the racketeering, but the federal prosecutor refused. Instead, Kaplan appointed an attorney from a private law firm, Seward & Kissel , who has close ties with Chevron, to handle the prosecution in July 2019. Instead of randomizing a judge in this case, Kaplan also appointed Judge Loretta Preska to preside over the case.
Loretta Preska was appointed by George H. W. Bush in 1992. Preska is currently on the advisory board of the New York chapter of the Federalist Society, a right-wing judicial lobby of which Chevron is a donor. According to Jacobin,
Preska denied Donziger’s request for a jury trial, barred Zoom access to the trial for the public, and consistently ruled against Donziger’s legal team. She refused to hear from Donziger’s lawyers about why he had drawn the contempt charge by not turning over his laptop and phone — namely, to protect attorney-client privilege — and at one point sat and read newspapers while presiding over the proceedings.
Preska also has questionable ethics as a judge, since she presided over cases in which she has a history of pro-business rulings. According to Jacobin, once again:
Back in 1995, three years after she had been approved for the court, Preska presided over a copyright case involving the Twin Cities–based West Publishing Company, despite her and her husbands’ connections to the firm. (Preska’s husband, Thomas Kavaler, is a nearly forty-year veteran of and partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a top corporate law firm that specializes in the world of finance). It was only when pressed by one of the litigants, forcing her to admit relationships with two West employees, including a lawyer who was key to the case, that she recused herself.
When Preska sentenced Donziger to six months in prison, Judge Preska said that “only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law.” This quote can be interpreted as calling for violence against the lawyer, Donziger.
In looking at the case, the courts are doing a witch hunt prosecution towards Donziger simply because he challenged the transnational fossil fuel industry like Chevron.
First, Donziger was rightfully justified in not surrendering his personal items such as his cell phone and computers to the prosecutors because it would be a breach of the attorney-client privilege. Chevron could have used the private information that was privately protected and retaliated against the clients Donziger represents. We could have seen a similar situation to the murder of an environmental activist, Berta Caceres, in Honduras in 2016.
Second, the judges did not disclose their conflict of interests, which had a massive influence on their ruling against Donziger. For example, financial documents show that Judge Kaplan invested in “three JP Morgan funds that have holdings in Chevron.” The judge never disclosed these investments, even though he was asked to recuse himself. Judge Preska also did not disclose her conflict of interests, such as she is a member of the right-wing organization, the Federalist Society, which Chevron finances the organization. Because of this, both Judge Kaplan and Preska should have recused themselves in this case because it influenced their judicial decisions on the Donziger case and it made them biased towards Chevron.
Third, Judge Preska has acted unconstitutionally throughout the case. For example, Preska denied Donziger’s request for a jury trial and barred Zoom access to the trial for the public. Under the Sixth Amendment, the accused criminal has a right to a jury trial and shall enjoy a right to a public trial. Judge Preska violated the constitution and engaged in judicial misconduct. Because the Judge violated his sixth amendment rights, Donziger has grounds to appeal his conviction based on her conduct alone.
Because of the reasons above, Donziger should be realized and pardoned by the Biden Administration. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ruled that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal under international law. Democrats in the House such as Jim McGovern, Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland to review this legal case. And finally, human rights organization Amnesty International also condemned the ruling and wrote a letter to A.G Garland to investigate the case and release Donziger.
Why is Donziger, who is exposing the negligence committed by Chevron by poisoning the village in the Amazon region, held accountable but not the executives? This Donziger case is an example of how corporations can get away with their negligence by legally bribing judges in their favor.
The views expressed in the journal are their own and not the view of The La Raza Pre Law.
Biography:
Brandon Blanco is a UC Davis senior, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Human rights. Originally from Los Angeles and is also passionate about informing the injustices within the criminal justice system. He plans on pursuing a career as an immigration lawyer.
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