{"id":61790,"date":"2022-02-07T10:05:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T15:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61790"},"modified":"2022-02-07T10:05:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T15:05:23","slug":"six-month-sentence-for-lawyer-who-took-on-chevron-denounced-as-international-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61790","title":{"rendered":"Six-Month Sentence for Lawyer Who Took on Chevron Denounced as ‘International Outrage’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Steven<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Steven Donziger speaks at a rally for his freedom outside his New York City apartment on July 6, 2021. (Photo: Steven Donziger via\u00a0Twitter<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Six-Month Sentence for Lawyer Who Took on Chevron Denounced as ‘International Outrage’<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Conviction of Steven Donziger, said one critic, “perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted the U.S. justice system to protect corporate interests and punish their enemies.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Environmental justice advocates and<\/strong>\u00a0other progressives\u00a0on Friday\u00a0condemned a federal judge’s decision\u00a0Friday\u00a0to sentence human rights lawyer\u00a0Steven Donziger to six months in prison\u2014following more than two years\u00a0of\u00a0house arrest\u00a0related to a lawsuit he filed\u00a0decades ago against oil giant Chevron.<\/p>\n

“Chevron caused a mass industrial poisoning in the Amazon that crushed the lives of Indigenous peoples. Six courts and 28 appellate judges found the company guilty. Fight on.”
\n\u2014Steven Donziger<\/span><\/p>\n

The sentence, delivered by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York City, represents “an international outrage,”\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0journalist Emma Vigeland following its announcement.<\/p>\n

Donziger’s sentence came a day after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0it was “appalled” by the U.S. legal system’s treatment of the former environmental lawyer and demanded the U.S. government “remedy the situation of Mr. Steven Donziger without delay and bring it in conformity with the relevant international norms” by immediately releasing him.<\/p>\n

Donziger\u00a0represented<\/a>\u00a0a group of farmers and Indigenous people in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador in the 1990s in a lawsuit against Texaco\u2014since acquired by Chevron\u2014in which the company was accused of contaminating soil and water with its “deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Amazon.”<\/p>\n

An Ecuadorian court\u00a0awarded<\/a>\u00a0the plaintiffs a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011\u2014a decision upheld by multiple courts in Ecuador\u2014only to have a U.S. judge reject the ruling, accusing Donziger of bribery and evidence tampering. Chevron also countersued Donziger in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Donziger speaks at a rally for his freedom outside his New York City apartment on July 6, 2021. (Photo: Steven Donziger via\u00a0Twitter) Six-Month Sentence for Lawyer Who Took on Chevron Denounced as ‘International Outrage’ Conviction of Steven Donziger, said one critic, “perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted the U.S. justice system to protect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[129,7669,8739,18352,31918],"class_list":["post-61790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-chevron","tag-common-dreams","tag-ecuador","tag-julia-conley","tag-steven-donziger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61791,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61790\/revisions\/61791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}