Friday, August 6, 2021 is the two-year mark of the home detention of American human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped his Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients secure a US $9.5 billion court judgment in Ecuador against Chevron for deliberate, decades-long contamination of the Ecuadorean Amazon by its predecessor, Texaco. Chevron retaliated by suing Donziger and the Ecuadorean plaintiffs in the US, where it managed to convince trial and appeal courts that the Ecuadorean judgment was procured by fraud. Chevron also sued Donziger for civil contempt of court for refusing to obey orders requiring him to hand over to Chevron computers and devices containing confidential attorney-client information. The judge in that case, a former tobacco industry lawyer, referred his own criminal contempt of court allegations against Donziger to the US Attorney’s office, which declined to press charges. The judge then appointed a law firm that had Chevron as a client as a private prosecutor to try Donziger for criminal contempt of court, which is a misdemeanor (petty) offence. The judge presiding over that prosecution put Donziger under pre-trial house arrest in August, 2019 and eventually convicted him on all six counts of criminal contempt, in a process that lawyers and jurists around the world condemned as improper and unjust.
Steven remains in home detention today and has already spent longer in detention than the maximum sentence available for the offence for which he was prosecuted. Donziger is the only lawyer in US history held in detention on a misdemeanor charge for even one day, much less two years.
This will be one of many rallies on August 6 calling for Donziger’s release and for justice for the Ecuadorians, to be held in cities around the world including Quito, Los Angeles, New York and Boston.
Watch Steven discuss his conviction for criminal contempt of court: https://thehill.com/.../565505-steven-donziger-human...
Learn more about the case and support Steven’s defence: https://www.donzigerdefense.com/
Follow Steven on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SDonziger?s=20
- Centre for Law and the Environment
- General Public
- Equality and Social Justice