Skagit County Jury found Climate Activist Ken Ward Guilty

[countryjake]

Split Decision: Valve-Turner and Climate Activist Ken Ward Convicted On One Count

Ward faces prison time for shutting down a pipeline. He says it’s time to end “incremental thinking.”

by Sara Bernard ~ Wednesday, Jun 7, 2017 ~ Seattle Weekly

https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/split-decision-valve-turner-and-climate-activist-ken-ward-convicted-on-one-count/


Ken Ward and supporters at the Skagit County courthouse on June 5, 2017. Photo courtesy Climate Direct Action

On Wednesday, a Skagit County jury found climate activist Ken Ward guilty of one of the charges brought against him for closing an emergency shutoff valve on a tar sands pipeline near Anacortes last October. While the jury deadlocked on the question of “sabotage,” they ultimately determined that Ward was guilty of second-degree burglary, a charge that carries up to a decade in prison, and/or up to $20,000 in fines.

Chances are vanishingly small, given state sentencing guidelines, that he will be sent to prison for a full decade. At most, because he has no prior felony convictions, he may spend a year — or possibly two. A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for June 22, and Ward’s legal team is prepared to appeal the decision immediately.

It was Ward’s second trial. In January, a different jury was unable to reach any verdict at all — a surprising, temporary win for the defense team. In both trials, Ward’s attorneys were not allowed to use the “necessity defense,” a legal principle that says a crime can be necessary if it’s done to prevent greater harm (in this case, the greater harm of climate change). Jurors were instructed only to see the facts of the case and to hear Ward’s arguments about his own motivation, which stems from decades of working on climate policy via legal means.

So, in a way, Wednesday’s verdict doesn’t come as a great surprise. “Lightning doesn’t normally strike twice in the same place,” says Lauren Regan, Ward’s attorney and founder and executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. Ward, too, never thought that a jury would ultimately refuse to convict him on at least one of the counts. “My expectation going into this all along,” he says, “was that unless we were able to include the necessity defense, it was highly unlikely for a jury to find me anything other than guilty.”

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After Court Restricts Constitutional Right to Defense, Climate Activist Receives Split Verdict for Pipeline Protest

JUNE 7, 2017 ~ Kelsey Skaggs ~ Climate Defense Project

https://climatedefenseproject.org/12205-2/

Mount Vernon, WA — Following controversial court rulings restricting his right to present a defense, climate activist Ken Ward received a split verdict today in a trial in Skagit County, Washington. Mr. Ward was found guilty of burglary, a Class B felony, while the jury failed to reach a verdict on a felony count of sabotage. The charges stemmed from an October 2016 protest in which Mr. Ward and four other activists temporarily blocked the flow of tar sands oil from Canada into the United States, calling on the federal government to take action to stave off catastrophic climate change. The prosecution’s failure to convict Mr. Ward of all charges came after a first trial earlier this year that resulted in a hung jury on both charges. Together, the results represent a backlash against prosecutorial overreach and a victory for climate activists who advocate the use of civil disobedience to address the climate crisis.

Mr. Ward’s sentence will be determined on June 23; the burglary charge carries a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment and a $20,000 fine. Mr. Ward plans to appeal the conviction.

Mr. Ward, a veteran environmental leader from Corbett, Washington, turned the valve on a Kinder Morgan pipeline as part of a series of actions calling on the federal government to act decisively to address climate change, in solidarity with the Standing Rock anti-pipeline resistance in North Dakota. Prosecutors first tried to convict Mr. Ward of the felony charges — which are uncharacteristically severe for a case of nonviolent civil disobedience — in a trial in late January and early February, but the jury failed to reach a verdict. The government’s decision to retry Mr. Ward provoked criticism over waste of public resources and persecution of peaceful activists.

Mr. Ward received the split verdict after Judge Michael E. Rickert ruled prior to trial that the defense team could not present the “climate necessity defense,” an increasingly popular legal argument in which activists argue that their acts of civil disobedience are necessary to overcome corporate and governmental intransigence in the face of impending climate catastrophe. The ruling barred Mr. Ward from calling expert witnesses to testify about the science of climate change and the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action in creating political change.

That controversial judicial decision followed remarks made by Judge Rickert prior to the first trial that cast doubt on the scientific consensus on the causes of global warming, a theme revived by the prosecution in pretrial motions and jury questioning in the second trial.

[Lyricalinklines]

1. Thank you for posting here.

I hadn't heard about this verdict.

I think it's likely we'll see more such citizen actions in view of current changes.