Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Judge Mary Ann Driscoll has dismissed criminal charges against protestors including Al Gore’s daughter on the grounds that their actions were necessary to prevent climate change.
Judge sets aside charges in pipeline protest
Jordan Graham Thursday, March 29, 2018
…
The protesters, including Karenna Gore, the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, were facing charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace after climbing into a construction trench. On Tuesday, prosecutors asked a judge to convert the criminal charges into civil infractions, saying in the event of a conviction they were unlikely to ask for any further punishment. After allowing the motion, Judge Mary Ann Driscoll found the defendants not responsible, saying she agreed with their argument that their actions were necessary to combat climate change.
“Based on the very heartfelt expressions of the defendants who believe, and I don’t question their beliefs in any respect, who believe in their cause because they believe they were entitled to invoke the necessity defense, I’ll accept what they said,” Driscoll said.
…
This finding echoes a similar judgement in England in 2008, in which protestors were cleared of causing £30,000 of criminal damage because necessity defence.
Not guilty: the Greenpeace activists who used climate change as a legal defence
Six Greenpeace climate change activists have been cleared of causing £30,000 of criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and lead to more direct action protests against energy companies.
The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six by a majority verdict. Five of the protesters had scaled a 200-metre chimney at Kingsnorth power station, Hoo, Kent, in October last year.
The activists admitted trying to shut down the station by occupying the smokestack and painting the word “Gordon” down the chimney, but argued that they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world. It was the first case in which preventing property damage caused by climate change had been used as part of a “lawful excuse” defence in court. It is now expected to be used more widely by environment groups.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/11/activists.kingsnorthclimatecamp
If activists take this in my opinion ridiculous court process as a green light to interfere with fossil fuel installations, fossil fuel companies could suffer economic losses.
It might even lead to loss of life – sneaking onto active worksites, jumping into construction trenches, closing valves without warning on high pressure pipelines and scaling smokestacks is dangerous, both for the activists themselves and for any workers caught up with trying to save activists from their own stupidity.
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As Einstein said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe”. If you are stupid, you don’t bother about unintended consequences.
If it’s any consolation, as of this writing all the comments are of the “WTF”? variety.
I wonder if the case will go to appeal?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
That doesn’t sound like an intelligent saying to me. Why is human stupidity infinite? Because stupid people exist and will always exist? In that case, isn’t human intelligence also infinite? How about love? Strenght? Weakness? Good? Evil? Pretty much everything is infinite then.
I think Einstein was making a joke. He could do that, you know.
It’s just the question of who’s stupid. Anyone who wants to protect the world or who considers his death to be fun.
Protect the world from what?
So if I commit a crime and say that my belief in “X” required it, and the judge shares my belief, I can get away with said crime?
Yeah, that does not have the potential to cause problems.
Given the fact that Judge Mary Ann Driscoll found the defendants not responsible for their dastardly devious premediated criminal activity simply because she, Judge Driscoll, “agreed with their argument”, …… is reason enough to appoint a Special Prosecutor or Grand Jury to re-visit the past rulings of Judge Driscoll for other instances of extreme bias and/or bribery that benefitted the defendant(s).
Judge Driscoll should be impeached and removed from the bench. Period.
I read it more as since they believed it (and no harm was done) she would allow it as a defense. Not sure she actually said that she agreed with them.
Read it again, billw1984. She didn’t just “allow” it as a defense, she dismissed the charges. And in doing so she said, “and I don’t question their beliefs in any respect…” If you don’t question or disagree with someone “in any respect,” are you not agreeing with them?
“Lordy, I am surprised that any self respecting prosecutor would even bring this case to the court and waste the Justice?? departments time”.
I think that means that she is not questioning their declarations of what they believe. ie she accepts there word. That does not mean she agrees or holds tha same belief.
The same thing happened in the UK case. The judge allowed their defence because they held their belief in climate change like a religion. This was basically a legal recognition that CAGW is a religion, not science.
So complainith: Jim Moran – March 31, 2018 at 11:01 am
Jim Moran, …… do you know what is actually mean by “criminal charges”, ….DUH, to wit:
And JM, …… Judge Mary Ann Driscoll and the Prosecutor are both Officers of the Courts in Boston, Massachusetts, ………. and NOT IN ….. San Francisco or Berkley, California.
Renewable Energy Information on Markets, Policy, Investment
Webpage has a bibliography on energy, renewable energy.
Includes Greenpeace activities on the international level.
Scroll through and select any articles.
http://www.martinot.info/futures.htm
Greg Goodman “This was basically a legal recognition that CAGW is a religion, not science.” Not quite, because if protesters took the same actions due to a (Christian) religious belief, say entering an abortion clinic to prevent murder, they would be prosecuted.
Its lordy lordship only has to ‘not question’ said belief and it can all go away.
Gosh what a slippery slope.
Yep, I’m sure that many jihadists also fervently and honestly “believe” in what they are doing and consider they a moral imperative to do it.
Sounds like we are one step closer to converting our Judicial System into the Ministry of Truth and determining, based on the whim of a few individuals, what is true and what is false and by extension deserving of punishment under the law. Well that is how our science has been handled the past couple of decades. I choose to believe therefore it is.
It goes back to the current notion of social proof establishing facts. Thomas Sowell said it well:
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-it-is-bad-enough-that-so-many-people-believe-things-without-any-evidence-what-is-worse-thomas-sowell-77-94-05.jpg
Greg, that is the real meaning of Jihad. The belief it is your duty to carry out a particular action.
Are you saying Karenna Gore et. al. are anti fossil fuel Jihadists?
In the UK we refer to that as the ‘Blair Defense’
First used in defense of his actions up to and including the 2nd Iraq war based on parliamentary approval given because a flawed and doctored intelligence dossier was presented as ‘fact’.
The fact that he was either complicit in deception or an incompetent fool to be taken in, and no one else was ever brought to book except the journalist who exposed the dossier and the government scientist who gave him the facts and mysteriously ‘committed suicide’ in a field two miles from his home…was completely overlooked
Blair’s defense was that he was innocent because ‘he had believed what he was doing was the right thing’
Imagine Nixon trying that on, and getting away with it.
These people are blatant and arrogant in their utter contempt of law, competence, truth or probity and they are utterly without honour, and they are getting away with murder.
I tried to get off a speeding fine by saying ‘I believed I was in a 50mph limit’
If Blair could do it so could I.
Apparently not 🙁
RIP Dr David Kelly a very courageous man.
Leo Smith: plus 1
Greg Goodman: Hear, hear.
so I can rob a bank….because I believe I need money
Only if you believe you need it to fight climate change you can believe in.
Especially if you didn’t intend to do what you did.
Somehow I doubt that Judge Driscoll would extend her logic to abortion protesters.
Indeed
This defense is equivalent to the “He needed killin'” justification.
Is this ruling equivalent to the ‘save the forest’ folks dangerously spiking trees and injuring lumberjacks?
Did they ever get away with a “necessity” defense?
@RockyRoad…
Emphatically agree with that 100%
I wonder if the judge would like it if the gas company shut off the line to her house because [whatever silly reason can be concocted goes here.]
There’s enough stupid in that court decision to drive a bus through it.
Yup. That Ferrari Testarossa of yours is causing global warming, therefore I’m entitled to seize it.
Looks like Sharia law violence against women has just been green lighted in this judge’s jurisdiction.
RockyRoad said, “Judge Driscoll should be impeached and removed from the bench. ”
Actually, the Constitution says that judges shall serve under Good Behavior. This clause has never been used to remove judges – but it should be. And, it is unspecific enough that I expect all three branches may exercise this authority. As the appointing branch, the Executive (the President) needs to accept the responsibility for carrying out this Constitutional requirement.
I can’t fathom such a ruling as this. To me this is obvious Bad Behavior.
Either someone takes unprecedented measure to fix the problem, or we have to conclude the US Constitution is an experiment that failed (after a much longer time than other experiments).
not exactly a green light; more a Letter of Marque .
2 wrongs make precedent.
1000 makes tradition.
and you build on that.
those are waypoints on the journey to socialist paradise.
If you tried this kind of thing in a socialist paradise, you would find yourself disappeared.
The great irony of socialism.
This needs to be treated as seriously as terrorism. Military courts for the activists.
(Possibly also for these judges.)
absolutely…..every one of these activist judges need to see some jail time
Does this ruling mean that if David Keith’s proposed experiment over Tucson, Arizona brings harm to people, he’ll get off the hook?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/proposed-test-stirs-debate-solar-geoengineering-180962745/
In essence this Judge has set aside the rule of law.
If strongly held belief’s are now taken by a judge as sufficient to over-rule and ignore the law when people choose to break it then the rule of law no longer prevails.
I strongly believe that climate change is a hoax – and so presumably , under this Judge’s ruling, whatever i do to disrupt or prevent warmists from promoting their message – even when it entails breaking the law – is perfectly ok and I will not face any sanction or punishment.
Heaven help us.
If Manafort and his pro-Russian (*) buddies in team Trump are guilty of “conspiration against the US” for preventing some US administration of preventing “money laundering” that is trying to evade taxation, what is that judge guilty of?
(And BTW, who has never prevented the US gov of applying some bizarre so called law by hiding stuff?)
(*) advised a pro-Russia Ukraine President or something
Strongly held beliefs such as ideas about the heathen and witches could then be used to justify any action imaginable. What’s next?
Oh, wait, we already had the stakes band the burnings and beating the ‘native’ out of indigenes.
Obviously the suspension of laws is required to admit such a defense. Surely then, opposition to civil disobedience is also justified on the same grounds. That is how civil wars start.
Was this a high court (supreme court) decision? It should be taken there on appeal.
I believe that appeals are only when the defendant loses.
No, prosecutors can, in some jurisdictions, appeal. But not, I believe, in the US.
But these prosecutors were complicit in this decision. “On Tuesday, prosecutors asked a judge to convert the criminal charges into civil infractions, saying in the event of a conviction they were unlikely to ask for any further punishment.”
This was Boston after all.
Irrespective of their climate beliefs, I would not want to see people getting a criminal record and ruining their life for a sit-in protest in a muddy trench. Throwing the book at people like this for simple trespass quickly becomes suppression of the right to demonstrate and free speech.
Retired_Engineer_Jim;
How right you are. The prosecutors were entirely complicit in this case. By asking a clearly sympathetic judge to drop it from a criminal to a civil case they ensured that everybody got off the hook. I’m guessing here but I believe a court recorder is always necessary in a criminal case but probably not so in a civil case. Thus there’s no counter argument to any arguments that existed since you can’t argue a lapsed memory. There’s going to be no written ruling to appeal. I’ve seen this game in civil court.
Think about what really probably happened. Al Gore’s daughter got off the hook. The elite and politically connected got their child out of trouble. The argument was reframed. For the judge and prosecutors either retaliation will not be forthcoming or some form of gift will. This is was not kindness on their parts. It was classic corruption.
“I would not want to see people getting a criminal record”
Many people get a criminal record for victim-less so called crimes.
What the hell is wrong with the courts in the USA.
Years ago a guy chose to sit outside at a restaurant and got stung by a bee. He sued the restaurant and git around a million. That in a normal court is considered an act of god so the restaurant owner would not be held responsible. This happened about 15 years ago so the USA court system has only got more fucked up.
I think you will find that this is Boston, not Boston Mass. Boston (without any qualifier) is in Lincolnshire, England.
No, you are wrong. It is Boston Mass.
There was a case a number of years back when someone trying to break into a store fell through the skylight.
He sued the company and won.
Weird. Did the restaurant have beehive nearby or something and they didn’t clear it out? Or was it just random bee from nowhere? In that case, that is pretty stupid.
While US judges indulge in activist adventures giving celebrity teenagers a green light to destroy nation national infrastructure, Russia meanwhile moves decisively ahead of the US building nuclear powered missiles with almost unlimited range, a sphere of technology from which the US is forbidden by its politically correct priesthood.
https://youtu.be/BL20Y7gC7AA
This is how civilisations die. By air-headed hubris of national power brokers such as judge Driscoll.
Russia’s GDP is smaller than Italy’s and Italians make better cars. Get on with fracking to defeat Russian and Saudi meddling.
Indeed.
Fracking and nuclear power is the best weapon against Russia.,
That is why the communist Greens hate it.
Nigel
Indeed – remind me which Italian company it is that makes nuclear driven cruise missiles that can stay airborne for a day or more. O yes I forgot – it’s Zanussi, of course; senior moment! Those Russians should be careful not to cross the EU countries, or they’ll end up having dishwashers dropped on their heads from Airbus airliners.
I know you’re getting on a bit Leo but in case you missed the memo , Russia is not longer run by communists and the Soviet Union fell apart a few decades ago. Time to update the anti-commie rants.
The same guys who ran the communists, still run Russia.
If this was the UK, they’d have called it “Rocketty McAnnihilationFace”…
For our american chums who might miss the point..
Given the choice, the people will always vote for Boaty McBoatface.
So it comes down to how sympathetic the judge is to your cause.
Wow.
That’s an astonishingly bad decision. One set of laws for those whose cause is deemed just, and another for most other people.
Perverting the course of justice.
A serious crime in the UK, but inevitably applied in both the US & UK now as a matter of course in the interests of climate hysteria.
This judge has committed a crime in her own court by entirely ignoring criminal events, and acquitted on the grounds of an unproven hypothesis.
As someone pointed out earlier, we can now round up all the crazy old dears we believe to be witches and burn them, because we believe they are witches.
One word.
Ratshot
I was wondering if Gore himself got to the judge.
The AG (is that the correct route for the USA?) needs to review this decision.
“One set of laws for those whose cause is deemed just, and another for most other people.” Echoes of Eric Holder and Obama who chose to only enforce the laws they agreed with. This judge was just following suit.
Robin Hood did the same thing. He believed strongly in the need of the poor, only the sheriff of Nottingham was against this policy. Back then, in that imaginary world, the authorities were more honest – or what?
maybe it just seems that way cuz there was greater transparency?
Rebelled against taxation.
These thugs are certainly for a “carbon tax”.
Too many forget that the Rich in the story of Robin Hood were entirely people with connections to the Government of the day.
I seriously doubt any court would have excused Robin’s actions had the sheriff succeeded in catching him.
I’m not sure about that, but he would have had a much better chance at advancing the “imminent harm” defense than these chuckle-heads.
Greenpeace won’t be climbing Kingsnorth chimney again. Pity the chiney wasn’t tall enough for ‘Gordon is a moron’.
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/boom-kingsnorth-power-station-demolished-180163/
I found it necessary to kill the ceo of exon your honour. Fair enough, case dismissed.
Could it not equally be argued that action taken was necessary to prevent a fraud? Which could justify the use of force against activists. A fraud is, after all, an identifiable crime. Changing the climate is not.
Looks like prosecutors dropped the ball and “climbing into a construction trench” just wasn’t a very big deal. Also sounds like they spent some time in jail and everybody’s happy with calling that good. Tempest in a teapot.
Climbing into a construction trench violates the company’s OSHA commitment for site construction safety. The company then becomes liable when the trespassers gets hurt – which IS the Eco-terrorists’ goal!
The word terrorist loses all meaning if it simply applies to anyone you disagree with. Some Anti-fa activists qualify but sitting in a ditch … na.
Conviction with the penalty being time served would have been justice. Dismissing the charges altogether tells everyone that what they did wasn’t a crime, and that sets a precedent.
Not to mention bringing the law into disrepute, which is a much, much larger problem. If the people conclude that courts exist only to protect criminals against their victims, our whole society will rapidly go to hell.
Whatever the judges summing up and direction may have been, the fact is that the jury decided the question of guilt. It is perhaps symptomatic of the hold that the irrational green religion has over public discourse and beliefs that a jury came to this decision. Even if the judge gave strong directions to the jury for acquitting the defendants, a jury could have decided otherwise and in the past brave juries have done just that against a judges clear instruction.
I hope that there will be an appeal against this idiotic verdict, but given how spineless government has become against eco-idiots that seems a remote prospect.
The jury is responsible? What about the judge allowing that absurd defense to be presented?
Indeed. Appeal the decision.
Or was it the public prosecutor?
Oh. It was.
The public prosecutors dropped the charges
If they would convert to civil infractions and then as I understand it she cleared them of those as well.
Smacks of behind the scenes stitch up.
Yes Al Gore apparently threatened to make another movie if his daughter did not get let off.
If the charges were dismissed, then the case didn’t go to a jury.
Exactly – when this Judge dismissed the charges, he told any jury to go home, they weren’t going to be allowed to even listen to the case.
What jury?
this decision was the activists alone.
The fossil fuel/pipeline companies were operating under proper permitting and rule of law in regards to their activities. How can an activist Judge over rule everything that society has properly approved without being overturned by a higher court? If allowed to stand, it makes a mockery of democratic civilization itself. Taking the law into your own hand has never been a proper allowable defence in a premeditated action. Especially one that is political in nature, i.e properly approved infrastructure opererated under a statutory permit issued by the appropriate Authority.
If it were a civil action, the pipeline company could appeal the dismissal. But, since this is a criminal complaint, once the judge throws the charge out, there is no appeal. The only question then becomes whether it was dismissed “with prejudice” or not. If not, then the prosecutors “could” re-present the charges in another case if they were so inclined.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing today is daused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Their actions can have no effect on climate.
The traditional bar for successfully using this defense is much higher than a climate Nazi could have topped. In particular:
* there was a specific threat of significant, imminent danger
* there was an immediate necessity to act
* there was no practical alternative to the act
* the defendant didn’t cause or contribute to the threat
Significant, imminent danger? By the time the judge made this “decision,” did a climate catastrophe occur? If not, the “imminent” part can’t be invoked. Particularly since we’ve passed so many dates by which the climate Nazis had predicted doom that this argument should have been laughed out of court.
And “the defendant didn’t cause or contribute to the the threat” when applied to Algore’s daughter by itself probably invalidates the defense. The Fat One himself has a bigger “carbon footprint” than some small nations.
I actually think that a judge like this presents a greater imminent threat to civilization than any AGW ever could. But it’s small comfort that if the climate Nazis succeed in destroying industrial civilization with her help, and she suffers the same consequences as the rest of us, that we can say “I told you so.”
But seriously, I think the real fault was on the part of the attorney(s) for the plaintiff. Defeating the necessity defense shouldn’t be very difficult, no matter how biased the judge.
Yup. And it needs to go to appeal – or whatever the US equivalent is.
With a crowdfunded legal pot.
I’ll donate £$
There’s no appeal for the prosecution. That’s double jeopardy, explicitly prohibited in the Constitution.
The exception is when the state and federal governments both have jurisdiction, in which case each may try the defendant on the same charges.
Double jeopardy would apply if they were tried and found innocent.
They weren’t tried, the charges were dismissed.
But the prosecution generally cannot refile charges once a judge has dismissed them.
Depends on how the charges were dismissed, if they were dismissed with prejudice, then yes.
Many times the judge just tells the prosecutors to get their case in order and re-file.
@drednicholson;
It’s NOT double jeopardy. Double jeopardy only attaches if the defendant goes to trial. Under the right circumstances, the prosecutor could bring the same or slightly amended charges at a later date. Practically speaking, not likely to happen given the political inclinations of the prosecutor and judge.
Indeed. That “defence” had double-decker bus sized holes in it. Any competent and committed prosecutor would have demolished it in five minutes flat.
“Imminent threat” my a*s!! On the total lack of “imminent threat” the entire defence disintegrates.
The judge, in my opinion as an ordinary person to whom the law and justice is supposed to be transparent and its application supposed to be common sense, is completely out of order to allow that “defence”; and to have done so using the language she did.
Insanity in the court. Condoning criminal vandalism for purposes of subversive socio-political cause, erstwhile
allowing the defendant to profit from its notariety.
The stupid Judge Driscoll should be brought before her professional body to explain her actions. She should be removed from the Judiciary for siding with the beliefs of criminals.
Did you think even for a minute that they were going to throw the book at Gore’s daughter? 😀 lol
“Daddy, Daddy, those horrid men arrested me for a criminal offence. Make them go away please Daddykins”.
No, but a criminal conviction with a sentence of “time served” would have set the table nicely.
Now I am waiting for the defendants to sue for unlawful arrest.
They certainly got the right judge 😀
Stacked in favour for these loons all day long, Gore’s daughter guaranteed this was going to be dismissed ffs. There was never a chance of a conviction
No doubt Jihadi John was sincere in his beliefs, so does that mean the judge would accept his excuse for beheading his victims?
In Russia they’d fire warning shots, point a gun in their race, imprison them for a month or two and deport or exile them for life.
I’d like to be there if/when someone chains their self to her car to prevent her from damaging the planet 🙂
As noted above this sets a very dangerous precedent, that the cause or ends justify the means even to breaking the Law.
Can this be elevated to a higher court?
I would say that this does not set a precedent but follows that set by Holder & Obama.
The modelling behaviour is strong with this one…..