Steven Donziger, the environmental and human rights lawyer who received a $9.5 billion settlement in opposition to Chevron over oil dumped in Indigenous lands within the Amazon rainforest, surrendered himself to the federal authorities on Wednesday to start a six-month jail sentence.
Mr. Donziger was discovered responsible in July of six counts of felony contempt of courtroom for withholding proof in an extended, advanced authorized struggle with Chevron, which claims that Mr. Donziger fabricated proof within the Nineties to win a lawsuit he filed in opposition to the oil large on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous folks in Ecuador. The convictions have been preceded by Mr. Donziger’s disbarment final 12 months.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Donziger turned himself in to a federal jail in Danbury, Conn., the place he’ll serve his six-month sentence. He had already spent greater than 800 days beneath dwelling detention after the courtroom cited flight-risk considerations, his lawyer, Ronald L. Kuby, stated on Wednesday.
“After 100 pages of authorized briefing, the appellate courtroom at this time denied my launch in 10 phrases,” Mr. Donziger said on Twitter on Tuesday. “This isn’t due strategy of legislation. Neither is it justice.”
“We’ll get by way of this,” he added.
Representatives for Chevron didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
On July 31, 2019, Choose Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court docket in Manhattan, a former company lawyer, tried to cost Mr. Donziger with contempt of courtroom based mostly on his refusals in 2014 to present the courtroom entry to a long time of consumer communications on gadgets like his telephone and his laptop. That 12 months, Choose Kaplan supported Chevron’s criticism in a 500-page ruling discovering that Mr. Donziger and his associates had engaged in a conspiracy and felony conduct by ghostwriting an environmental report used as a vital piece of proof and bribing a decide in Ecuador.
After the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute the case, Choose Kaplan took the uncommon step of appointing a personal legislation agency, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute Mr. Donziger within the title of the U.S. authorities, Mr. Kuby stated.
Seward & Kissel has represented many oil and gasoline corporations all through the years, together with Chevron in 2018.
Misdemeanor felony contempt carries a most sentence of 1 12 months. If the penalty is greater than six months for this kind of cost, Mr. Kuby stated, a defendant would get a trial by jury. Even after a number of objections by Mr. Donziger, Choose Loretta A. Preska lowered the sentencing to 6 months — it had beforehand been set to a 12 months — and denied Mr. Donziger’s request for a jury trial.
In July, Choose Preska discovered Mr. Donziger responsible of all costs. On Oct. 1, Mr. Donziger was sentenced to 6 months in jail, a day after he requested the courtroom to think about an opinion by impartial United Nations consultants that discovered his court-ordered dwelling confinement of greater than two years a violation of worldwide human rights legislation.
Choose Preska agreed to not incarcerate Mr. Donziger instantly, giving him an opportunity to enchantment the circumstances of his bail. In a courtroom order on Oct. 12, Choose Preska declared that if Mr. Donziger’s enchantment failed, he must give up himself inside 24 hours of the choice.
In 1993, Mr. Donziger sued the Chevron Company for oil spills that had a detrimental impact on the Amazonian area of Ecuador. Mr. Donziger has argued that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, minimize by way of the Amazon, spilled oil into pristine rain forests and left behind a poisonous mess.
On the time, Chevron stated Mr. Donziger fabricated info for his personal ends, blaming the corporate for air pollution principally attributable to Petroecuador, the nationwide oil firm that was as soon as a associate of Texaco and continues to provide oil within the area.
Chevron has lengthy argued {that a} 1998 settlement that Texaco signed with Ecuador after a $40 million cleanup absolves it of legal responsibility. It contends that Ecuador’s state-run oil firm is chargeable for a lot of the air pollution within the oil patch that Texaco left within the Seventies.