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
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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.
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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.
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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.
This totalitarian would-be dictator activist thug-in-a-frock is way overdue for a very long extended visit to the state pen.
* Set fire to the judge’s house, because of all the fossil fuel required to maintain it. One less person’s house contributing to reducing fossil fuel usage means that a threat to using more fossil fuel has been eliminated.
* Disable the judge’s car. Apply a similar line of reasoning as above — a threat to using more fossil fuel has been reduced somewhat, even with one attack. Now trash all the lawyers’ cars involved in defending the Gore girl.
* Rip the cloths from the judge’s body, rendering her naked, because fossil fuel must be used to manufacture them.
By the judge’s seeming own logic, these actions are necessary for the benefit of society.
Dreadful precedent towards lawlessness and anarchy. Just a matter of time until someone can be justifiably murdered on the basis of their skepticism of climate change.
The insanity defense lives.
“Yes, Judge Driscoll, I find it absolutely necessary to set up my lawn chair and bring my portable TV into the middle of your courtroom. I need to call attention to the stupidity associated with your previous decision. AND, based on your previous decision, I am free to do so because I invoke the “necessity defense”. It is necessary to interrupt your court room in order to protect the honor and integrity of all other courtrooms in the country. Yes, I do disagree with YOUR stupidity … but I in order to protect others, I have not only the right, but the responsibility to stand up for all other good judges in the country. I believe with all my heart that I am entitled to be here, and that I am providing for the greater good.
“… will you please bring me a beer?”
Classic example of a hack-judge, basing decisions upon personal prejudice instead of law. THIS is the ‘deep state’ – and it’s also one more mechanism that unscrews the very foundations of our society – since we can no longer trust judges to enforce laws, they simply don’t mean anything anymore.
If the law suits their purpose they enforce it, if not they ignore it.
This is part of the problem in dealing with a movement who’s only goal is destruction of the system – any damage they do, simply furthers the cause. While they simply flout the rules, they hold us to them – binding us, essentially, by our own ethic.
Inherent in ‘higher-cause’ morality.
Good comment.
I would add that the “Founding Fathers” of the US assumed that a Judge would put the Law as written above their personal beliefs or politics. (“I believe this is wrong but the Law says it’s OK, therefore…)
They made a similar mistake in assuming the runner up in a Presidential Election should be the Vice President. They didn’t see the Two Party System at first but quickly fixed it. (Imagine if Al Gore was GW Bush’s Vice President? (Yeah, I know. The “Vice” part fits.))
Too bad before a Judge can be considered for Fed or State level office they don’t have to pass a reading compression test based on the 1776 definitions of the words written in the Constitution and, more importantly, The Bill of Rights.
It is The Bill of Rights that those flawed but wise men wrote to bring and keep their dream alive.
MODS!
Messed up my blockquote.
Should be:
You can point fingers at the flaws of the individuals involved back then, but what would you edit out of those words to achieve “The Cause”?