The Judicial Persecution of Steven Donziger
APRIL 9, 2021
BY EVE OTTENBERG
For some, call them criminal justice ingenues, it may be hard to believe this is happening in the United States, that our famed judiciary has sunk this low. But in the U.S., a judge acts as prosecutor and jury on behalf of a giant oil company, Chevron, as it destroys the life and career of human rights lawyer Steven Donziger. His crime? Daring to win a judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorian court. For those less enchanted with the U.S. justice system, this is no surprise. But there it is. This judicial travesty is occurring in New York state. And the Chevron friendly judges – first Lewis A. Kaplan and his hand-picked appointee judge Loretta Preska, and now the U.S. court of appeals for the second circuit in a March opinion – keep ruling for the company, as they cage Donziger with house arrest, 600 days so far and counting.
The New York federal prosecutor declined to prosecute this case which is based, Donziger says, on lies, so in an astonishing move, Kaplan appointed Chevron’s attorneys. There will be no jury. Judge Preska will doubtless find Donziger guilty – of a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of 90 days – though he’s already been under house arrest for over 600 days. The message to the legal community is clear: don’t mess with a fossil fuel company, because if you do, they will find a judge who favors the company and they will destroy you.
This unprecedented judicial persecution of a human rights attorney has its roots in the Amazon rain forest. Back in 2011, Donziger won a court case in Ecuador against oil giant Chevron. Worse yet for Donziger’s prospects, the Ecuadorian court awarded his indigenous clients $9.5 billion. These Ecuadorians charged that their health and livelihood had been destroyed by Texaco, now owned by Chevron, and its oil spills in the Amazon rainforest. In the face of this staggering penalty, Chevron took action, refusing to pay and, despite the fact that Chevron originally fought to have the trial in Ecuador, it then brought its case to a congenial judge in New York. Donziger’s fate was sealed.
Meanwhile back in Ecuador, according to what Donziger told Esquire in a March 18 article by Jack Holmes, Chevron “sold their assets in Ecuador, so the Ecuadorians would have nothing to collect. They threatened the indigenous peoples with ‘a lifetime of litigation’ if they didn’t drop their case…they tried to come up with a strategy to block enforcement of the Ecuador judgment against their assets in other countries. To do that, they needed to somehow allege that the judgment in Ecuador was the product of fraud.” Donziger told Esquire that how they did that was “they paid a former Ecuadoran judge, moved his family to the United States, paid his income taxes. Their lawyers coached him for 53 days. And ultimately he came into federal court and testified I approved the bribe of a trial judge in Ecuador…He has recanted most of his testimony. He’s admitted that he repeatedly lied in federal court. He admitted under oath…However the U.S. judge who Chevron took the case to, without a jury, has credited his testimony.”
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/09/the-judicial-persecution-of-steven-donziger/
