US Court Hides Evidence Revealing Truth about Chevron Crimes Against Poor Ecuadorians — Similar to Central Park 5 Case
By: Karen Hinton
Tags: New York, Pollution, Criminal Justice Reform, Courts, Ecuador

US Court Hides Evidence Revealing Truth about Chevron Crimes Against Poor Ecuadorians — Similar to Central Park 5 Case Karen Hinton Jun 17, 2019·6 min read

A few nights ago, I watched “When They See Us,” the Netflix film about the five New York boys of color wrongly accused and persecuted by their state’s court system for raping a white woman in 1989.

I watched the four-part series in one sitting because, as the plot thickened, I saw disturbing and prejudicial parallels to another case of injustice, involving poverty-stricken Ecuadorians and the American oil giant, Chevron. New York’s judicial heavyweights have refused to consider unshakable evidence, just like the powers-that-be did in the Central Park Five prosecution.

This present-day court swindle involves 30,000 or more brown and black Ecuadorians living in a toxic Amazon rainforest that has been poisoned by the American oil companies, Texaco and Chevron, since the early 1970s. In 2001, Chevron bought Texaco, headquartered then in New York.

Practically no white lawyer, no white prosecutor, and no white judge in New York has had any interest in obtaining and considering evidence about how thousands of brown and black Ecuadorians have been killed or injured via the injection of deadly toxins by the two American oil giants into the Ecuadorians’ land and water, owned by indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest.

In 2011, a few indigenous leaders traveled to New York to hear one white judge from his bench describe them as “corrupt” and “fraudulent” to their faces, even before he ruled against them in his Southern District Court of New York courtroom. Chevron kicked in at least $2 billion of its legal budget to terrorize the Ecuadorians and their attorneys in courts across the globe. The Central Park Five young men were not from wealthy and powerful families, and neither are the Ecuadorians.

It’s so much easier in a U.S. courtroom to punish the poor instead of the rich.

An Ecuadorian couple whose daughters, in the frame, died from cancer.

The Ecuadorians have one U.S. lawyer, Steven Donziger, who has never stopped fighting to save and protect them from the crude chemicals Texaco and Chevron left behind as they exited the rainforest — companies that illegally stripped the rainforest of oil or justice or both to make lots of money for themselves. Recently Kaplan demanded Donziger turn over his passport so he can no longer travel to Ecuador to see his clients and talk to them in person. Kaplan said he can get his passport back only if he gives the judge all of his emails and case documents about his legal fight as well as efforts to raise funds for his clients’ litigation against Chevron in Canada.

Quick history here: After Chevron bought Texaco in 2001, the Ecuadorians’ lawsuit — first filed in SDNY in 1993 — was moved to Ecuador at the demand of Chevron. In 2003, ten years later, the case picked up again. In 2006, a military-laced government morphed into a left-wing government, and Chevron, feeling terrified of a new regime, began its campaign to criminalize the Ecuadorians and their supporters. In 2011, the Ecuador courts awarded the indigenous and villagers in the rainforest a $9.5 billion judgment that Chevron refused to pay. Chevron tried but failed to appeal the damage award in Ecuador, and the top guns at Chevron knelt at Kaplan’s feet to destroy the Ecuadorians with legal bullets fired to convict them and their lawyers of fraud and bribery. In the U.S., Chevron defeated the people who suffer today from the oil giants’ environmental crimes. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorians brought a lawsuit against Chevron again, this time in Canada, and they are attempting to seize what is now, eight years later, a $12 billion judgment.

Read this piece that describes more of the human and environmental devastation resulting from lies told by Texaco and Chevron.

The two white New Yorkers, Kaplan and Gibson Dunn lawyer Randy Mastro (educated by former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani who is giving big kisses to the most unjust President in our country’s history) resemble the two white women attorneys involved in the Central Park Five war. They are the same race, white, and share a willingness to ignore facts in order to win and punish the innocent.

One was Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer, a prosecutor in the now overturned Central Park 5 convictions. She resigned recently from Columbia Law School where she served as a part-time professor after a group of black students called on her to quit.

The other was former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who was charged with handling the Central Park rape case. In response to the new film, Fairstein stepped down from her board of directors’ position on multiple charity organizations and at Vassar College. The former prosecutor also lost her book deal with Dutton Publishing, having written 16 New York Times Bestselling crime novels.

The two women hid valuable evidence that would have shown the Central Park boys’ DNA was not found at the rape scene or on the woman.

It was their secret until it wasn’t.

Today Chevron, Gibson Dunn and Kaplan all know about the huge amount of pollution evidence, clearly proving the environmental damage as well as the spread of cancer and other diseases among people living near contaminated land and water never cleaned by anyone, including Texaco, Chevron, as well as the Ecuador government. The evidence is their secret in the U.S. because Kaplan refuses to hear about it in his phony public mansion of justice.

And more —

Kaplan, Mastro and other Gibson Dunn lawyers recently huddled in Kaplan’s courtroom, 21B, to prevent Donziger, a human rights advocate, from raising money for legal fees to help the Ecuadorians obtain their $12 billion judgment in Canada. Kaplan in-as-much threatened Donziger with jail time if he does not turn over his materials and emails. He also has levied fines against Donziger that total $200,000 per day in what appears to be by far the most punitive fine in the history of the New York federal judiciary.

Donziger with his Ecuadorian clients in front of Canadian court; soon he will not be allowed to travel to Canada or Ecuador, thanks to Kaplan’s move to protect Chevron.

And —

Based on information provided by Chevron to the New York Bar Association, staff attorneys Jorge Dopico and Naomi Goldstein refused to grant Donziger a disbarment hearing, a move very odd and considered by many prejudicial. Donziger is awaiting a hearing on the proposed disbarment by the New York Bar Association in September, assuming Chevron does not try to charm, if not crash, the power centers of the NY Bar and block the hearing.

And —

In the 2011 fraud and bribery trial, Kaplan convinced Chevron to file a motion for civil, not criminal, charges against Donziger, other lawyers and the Ecuadorians. That way, no jury of New Yorkers could hear the fraud and bribery case against the Ecuadorians — yet another way to keep secrets. And Chevron’s only witness was paid at least $2 million for his testimony that he later denied in an arbitration fight between Chevron and the Government of Ecuador. These two articles (here and here) detail why Chevron’s paid witness was and is not credible.

At least the purpose behind the two white women’s unethical, if not illegal, pursuit of the five young boys was to seek justice for a woman who to this day cannot remember the rape because of severe traumatic damage to her brain from the attack. She suffered greatly, both physically as well as emotionally and is not to blame for the injustice delivered by New York’s court system. Kaplan and Mastro only want to seek justice for an American corporation that knowingly bought another oil company, whose leadership intentionally contaminated a once beautiful and healthy rainforest and harmed and killed people living there. Neither cared or care today about the plight of the Ecuadorians.

Judge Lewis Kaplan

Evidence of toxic crude at oil pit Texaco hid with dirt and Kaplan refused to consider in US fraud/bribery case.

Kaplan got to play god. Mastro made money for himself and his firm. Texaco and Chevron lied.

Will they all write crime novels one day, too? Or, will their lies be made public? Will we ever see the truth, as most judicial movers and shakers finally did in Central Park Five?